Resident Evil 6: The Break
by Crashbang
Summary: With Wesker dead, his Oroboros virus is doomed to die with him, his plan to infect the world and become a god burning in the lava off the coast of Africa. But with his death, more carnage is triggered, and another enemy of the BSAA rises...
1. Chapter 1

Author Note:

Hi all. This is my first attempt at Fan Fiction, and Im researching into Resident Evil as I go as I am not exactly fully versed. Still, I think I have a good story idea to follow on from Resident Evil 5, so here goes. Let the Apocalypse begin!

**Chapter 1/Prologue: Code Racoon  
**

To: Black  
Copied to: Red  
Subject: Date_  
We are losing. The hive is losing.  
We have lost cash flow, resources and support. Our reputation is lost and it becomes harder then ever to recruit. We cannot sustain our commitment to this investment.  
We can hope that Wesker is successful. If the BSAA find the flowers, all could be lost. It is a gamble that we must take. Wesker is reliable. He is efficient.  
He will succeed. And then our next phase can begin._

Regards, Red

-------------------------------------------------------------

He struggled through the mass. He felt every sinew burn and scald, over and over, his skin melt, his nerves burst into flames. He felt the blood boil within his tormented mutations, within his brain, to his every core. He felt the tentacles burn away, dissolve in the obscene liquid in which he drowned. He felt his mutant arm burning, melting...  
Somehow, he found his way again to the surface of the lava. He heard through melting ears the chopper up above, the thundering rotor blades.  
'CHRIIISS!'  
He ripped his arm from the lava up into the sky. The tentacles from his godly arm shot wickedly through the air, closing in on the Helicopter like a ballistic missile. Usually, he would have observed the incredible resilience of the virus he had created, its power.  
Now, there was nothing left. His nerves were burned away. He could only think of killing _him. _He felt the binding tentacles wrap the helicopters landing legs, an iron grip upon the helicopter causing it jolt and struggle in the air._  
_Foot by foot, he could feel himself dragging the chopper down. His eyes were melted away, but he could feel it. He could feel them being reeled in. They would die. Just like him.  
Then, he heard the rockets launch. Their hiss that grew loud in the space of seconds.  
He barely had time to scream. Barely had time to crane his head to one side, to try and dodge the rockets before one flew into his mouth. Snapped through his enhanced neck bone like matchstick.  
His heart stopped. Finally. Suddenly. Completely.

'That...was for our fallen brothers.'  
In the distance as a blot in the horizon, floated a US Battlecruiser. Off the coast of Somalia, its job was usually to escort supply ships, oil rigs and the like through the dangerous waters off the stricken African country.  
Today, it had one simple task. And that was to expect the arrival of a rescue chopper from the coast. Carrying 'high priority VIP's'.

Chris could almost see the battery guns now, the dents in the gun deck from falling ammunition shells. The high tech scanning equipment for air, sea and land. The beds. The cardboard, uncomfortable beds that Chris Redfield had never looked more forward to in his life. The thought of sleep. No virus. No infected villagers. No death, no chainsaws. No thundering of the helicopter blades in his ear.

Although, seeing and talking to Jill again, after what felt like a lifetime, was something he would treasure when the morning came.  
Jill Valentine sat across to the left of Chris, and every so often he couldn't help but glance at her, not quite believing what he was seeing. She had paled since he had seen her last. Every so often she would lightly brush her chest, where a device had been hooked into her skin, pulsing electrical current around her nerves, altering her brain waves irrevocably. At least, until Sheva had torn it off her, and smashed it into pieces under her boot.  
Jill looked like she hadn't slept in an age. Bags rolled under her eyes, every so often her pupils contracting in and out of focus, her eyelids drooping lower and lower. Later, as another bump brought Chris back to reality, back to the loud chopper, the bumpy ride, he wondered if he was really any different. He didnt need to look in any mirror to know he would have exactly the same tired strains on his face. The same scars of a long war against bio-terrorism.  
Again, he looked over to Jill, to see that the jolt hadn't awoken her. She slept peacefully.  
Chris saw Sheva watching her dropped head with worry, and wondered how she could still be wide awake. She didnt have his or Jills tired look. She looked as alert as she had for the past day, watching over the water below as if Wesker coul still be following them. She looked as if she could go through the entire experience again.  
Sheva mouthed something, lost over the choppers din. But Chris read her lips.  
_She could still be a threat. She could still be infected.  
_But Chris was too sleepy. Too relieved and tired to worry about it.

'She's fine. Don't worry about it. Wesker didn't care...about what happened to Jill. He thought he was going to infect the world with Oroboros.'  
He was drifting off again. He didn't want to stay awake any longer. The job was done. Wesker was dead. Oroborus was doomed, sure to be wiped out by the BSAA's UN military force without their leaders. Hell...Wesker, Excella, Irving...they had used the Oroboros infected as a distraction. So they could escape off the coast of Africa, to carry out a plan that could have easily destroyed the world forever.  
Those thoughts swiftly floated from Chris' thoughts as he fell asleep.  
Only to be jolted awake by another sudden drop in the choppers altitude. He knew it would happen, but that didn't stop the experience being very annoying, and unpleasant.  
He glanced up at Sheva again. She was shouting something again. He couldn't really hear her, although. Well, he could hear the odd word.  
_Wesker...too easy..._  
He chuckled. 'It's over.' He mumbled. 'Take a break.'  
As he fell asleep on the helicopter, he took pleasure out of the thought that Wesker was finally dead. That his last plan had been thwarted.  
He slipped into sleep with pleasant thoughts.

-------------------------------------------------

The call had gone out. The alarms rang.  
She rolled out of bed, already dressed in a battle overall, her boots still on her feet. Briskly walking to the end of her bed, as the lights above her head blazed their brightest, revealing her body armour, her gun on the large case sitting next to her bed rails, lain upon another larger case which kept a few of her most valuable possessions.  
Even as she slid on gloves, a bullet proof vest, checked her pistol, checked her BSAA standard sub machine gun, terror shivered her fingers. This situation was about as 'far from Kansas' as she could have got. She had never felt further away from home.

But they had been told to expect it all tonight. Told to be ready. It was a time like this she wished she hadn't joined the BSAA, barely a year ago.  
Around her, other women of the BSAA barracks were readying. She made sure she was quickest. Made sure her fingers were loose, her arms were flexible after the brief sleep she had taken. She slid on her battle helmet, another piece of bullet proof armour light on frontal face protection, so that she could see to her full extent, be fully aware. But she felt that vulnerability. She felt her nose with her fingers, knowing how fragile it was, her small round nose.  
In spite of every negative feeling, she turned towards the double barrack doors. She was the first out.  
The facility, usually silent as the remote location where it was based, blared with the sound of a continual voiced alarm. The sun was setting, blood red over the trees where this tiny facility was located. The trees shook all around with the gale winds that were whipping through the air. Soldiers, BSAA recruits, poured out of bunker like barracks, three small in total. The entire placement at this camp was just eighty, including officers, cleaning and catering staff.

'This is not a drill! Arm and ready! Code Racoon! Code Racoon!'  
Code racoon. She went over the details of code Racoon as the rest of her twenty strong unit gathered behind her at the pickup point, painted upon the ground in blazing yellow, stark lines. Code Racoon: Deployed in case of the outbreak or potential outbreak of infection in highly populated areas. In short – Potentially, or already, another Racoon City incident. She had read about it in the processing. Goosebumps spread along her arms. Could she be any more afraid right now? She could be about to walk into hell. She didn't know if she would walk out again.

But she had been in worse situations...she was one of the first recruits of the BSAA US domestic army program. Dedicated purely to the cause of bio terrorism within the United States. She was a captain, for god's sake! She was one of the best! Somehow...

Quickly, she turned. She saw her soldiers, in two ranks of ten.  
'If you are here say hail, two by two!'  
Two by two, the hails came, to the very back of the line.  
She finished hails, counting all present as twenty yards ahead their Chinook landed. Its double rotors thundering, the air generated buffering her face.  
'In!' She screamed, but her unit was already running, mounting up by the time she caught them, the front side hatch ready for her to climb into the front. Her soldiers were in and fastening themselves in by the time Ashley leapt into the front seat alongside her unknown driver.  
'Captain Ashley Graham! Is your unit ready!' He screamed.  
'My unit is ready!' Ashley screamed back. 'GO! GO!'

---------------------------------------------------------

End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

Authors note: Hey folks again. I'm really enjoying this fan fic stuff. Particularly the challenge of making Ashley from teenager to soldier. Nearly 5000 words this chapter, it is a giant bit of work. Guess thats what happens when you have nothing to do at uni.  
From what Ive written so far, this story is going to take a long time. Im hoping to bring alot of characters into the story from all over the resident evil world, and as for which ones die...who knows? Ill decide closer to the time. I might not kill any, and certainly wont kill any just for the sake of it.  
I hope those of you reading enjoy this chapter. Its focused primarily on Ashley, and there is also a brief mention of other characters. This story will be from numerous perspectives, but Ashley will become one of the main characters, so I hope. Then, beyond the next chapter or two Im not sure about anything but the simple plot, so we will see.  
Anyway, enjoy, and thanks for reading.

**  
Chapter 2: 48th Street**

_'I am relieved that my daughter is home, and I thank you for the concern but really there is no concern to be had...'  
This would be one of the rare times that President Graham answered questions of the press, while standing on the doorstep of his own, usually private home. There were hundreds of them, surrounding the presidents, standing on the gravel, the grass. Even the flower beds under the windows. Ashley could see crushed roses under foot.  
She watched from her bedroom window, making sure to keep the blinds as closed as she could without losing sight of those gathered below. She couldn't even see her father, or his hair, that had greyed considerably between her kidnapping by the ex-marine and her return by Leon. He was standing on the step, having to answer a storm of posing questions since the story of her kidnap was leaked, or at least escaped secrecy somehow.  
'Where is she now?'  
'Safe in her room.' Answered her father. 'Grounded.'  
Laughter rippled through the gathered press. Ashley didn't find it funny, no matter how good natured his father's happy, healthy laugh was._

_She closed the blinds fully with a jerk of the pulley string, knowing that at least one or two cameras would have turned to her window with the swish of the blinds. She fell on her bed face down with a flump. Then she turned over. Then she sat up again.  
It had felt very different this time, coming home. Her father had never been unfatherly – he had always tried to be there, help her through school, and her mother didn't need to work, so she was always there for her. Before Spain life had been comfortable, if at times tiresome with the constant interruptions from men wearing suits and carrying suitcases._

_That day, when Leon had returned her home personally, everything was different. Except it wasn't. She sat down in the dining room and had a sandwich, father and mother asked her if she was okay, took her grime covered boots away, brought her new clothes, asked her to re-tell the experience, which of course she declined. None of this would be any different to a day at school where she would be pushed in the mud. It was no different to how they would usually have treated her, except now she was uncomfortable. She was finding those questions more and more patronizing every time she thought about them. She had survived castle traps! She had escaped from Ganado – she paused in her thoughts for a moment, wondering if that was what Leon had called them before dismissing it as unimportant. She had helped Leon escape..._

_Did no one care? Of course not. Even if she told her parents, they would barely take notice. They probably now wanted her to stay inside forever, never grow up and never wander out into the world in case she was kidnapped again._

_Irritated, Ashley looked around her room. There was her favourite poster, of Will Smith signed by Will Smith. There was her mirror wardrobe which spanned the length of her room, full of expensive clothes, shoes, necklaces and other expensive accessories. There in front of the wardrobe were her long leather boots, her favourite boots. There in the mirror, she could see her own face growing even more irritated at the sight of all these things._

_This wasn't even a new thing! She had been home for weeks now. At first she relished being home again, and getting back to her life. But, as the weeks wore on...  
There was a frustration in her she couldn't dispel. She was home. She was in comfort. She could do just about anything she liked, at least for the moment. She felt like going on a rollercoaster. But she was terrified of roller coasters..._

_She could hear the ignition of engines – the press were dispersing, probably being herded away by the body guards. Then, someone knocked on Ashleys door.  
'Dinner Ashley!'  
'Ill be down soon...'  
But she couldn't bear the thought of being told all about the press conference. About how _everyone was soo worried _about her, wanted to know how she was doing, what she was doing, where she was...  
Ashley stood up and went to have a shower.  
_**  
**************************************************

'Graham!'  
Ashley snapped out of her reverie, remembering where she was.  
The Chinook which she sat in the cockpit of flew ahead of the other two, forming an arrow head in the sky. Their task force, the small army of the BSAA flew North-West from their base, deep within one of the forests of Colorado. The night above was almost clear, but for a few sporadic clouds. Three Chinooks transported the entire force, their rotor blades thundering as they quickly flew to their destination, where more surveillance and recon was already analyzing the target.

'Situation.' Ashley said through her mike to the other pilot via ear protectors, switching buttons so that the entire of her unit heard the briefing. The pilot waited for her to complete this before beginning.  
'We are going to Salt lake city, route 48. A company building there has been evacuated because of a suspected bomb threat. This bomb activated within two minutes of the death of Albert Wesker. We suspect that this is a potential outbreak zone, or a virus is waiting to be released upon the activation of the device. We must deactivate the device, or use extraordinary means to limit the reach of the virus.  
Ashley knew exactly what 'extraordinary measures' meant. Her unit would assume they had a measure to combat the spread, a cure or would simply close down the area, distribute radiation suits to the soldiers. That was what her soldiers would assume.

In actual fact, if the bomb were close to detonation, a radiation bomb would also detonate, destroying the device and any viral threat. Placed by one of the Captains of the BSAA with Weskers bomb, it would kill anyone left in the building, were higher command to decide the mission was irretrievable.  
It sent a chill down her spine to imagine that she may have to be the one to place the device. A fear that clung to her like cold water.

*********************************************

_Once again, the press were gathered outside their house. To Ashleys relief however, they were being kept firmly out of reach, outside the house gates, waiting like hungry dogs.  
President Graham had resigned.  
Ashley only knew that in his statement, he had said he wanted to 'spend more time with his family'. She didn't know anymore than that. She had chosen a long time not to immerse herself too deeply in her dad's work, especially when he was elected. His statement was all that she needed. Now they all sat in the living room together, with the TV pointedly switched off. Making small talk._

_'Maybe we'll go camping.' Her father said. 'Somewhere secluded. It would be fun to disguise ourselves for a while maybe, hide from the world.'  
Ashley smiled, briefly. It didn't go without notice. Her father smiled back at her, his weary. She suspected it was a mimic of hers.  
'And that...feels like the first time you have smiled in weeks. Looks like Im not doing my proper job right either...'  
Ashleys smile faded. Joke it was, and she knew it. But...  
'What's wrong Ashley?' Mother asked, only just noticing. Ashley didn't blame her. She had been faking happiness just for her. She didn't leave much to question for her parents. It was her life.  
But then nobody really questioned her jogging more, around the woods where she lived. Just seen as a good lifestyle change. _

_  
Other things, like running, some muscle work, she made sure no one knew about – she had needed help with that, but had sworn a friend to secrecy before asking him to help with bicep building, and he, Jermaine, or Jay had a crush on her anyway, poor thing. It wasn't like he was going to refuse. He had been going to the gym for years. He had wanted to be a basketball player, as all his mates did, but years after he had pretty much accepted the non reality of his dream he had kept going to the gym. And he helped to no end._

_  
The first few days she had tried the new regime, she hated it. Her lungs couldn't take the strain, her muscles couldn't, and even her determination to do so waned. She had even shouted at Jay once. She was close to quitting, saying damn it all and going back to a life as a future secretary somewhere. But then, those little things like her mirror, and her clothes wardrobe, would get so much on her nerves that she would just go for a run again. It was as if she had got an allergy to normal life. It wasn't something she understood, or tried to. It didn't really matter. Gradually, she had grown to enjoy her little regime. And with Jay there most days, she had grown fond of him as well. Although not quite in the way he wanted._

_Almost three years later of this improvised exercise, and while she was no body builder she was far more athletic. And ready, at least in her own, optimistic opinion. Still she thought, you never know...  
'Dad...' She began. 'Do you know about the BSAA?'  
Her father, as she should have expected, was nonchalant.  
'British secret agent...agency?' He said, with a half smile, a shrug. 'I don't know darling. Maybe someone told you the wrong initials.'  
The word _darling_ spurred her on.  
'I want to join.' She said. 'I want to join the BSAA.'_

_She didn't know much about the organization, except for a brief conversation with Leon, a few months after Spain. He said he was helping set it up, pushing for its building. He said he had nothing better to do at the time. It was what he had said next that had started all this. Ashley had asked more questions, evidently from what he said next, one too many.  
'Look, Ashley...you don't want to know. Just stay at home, like a kids life, and forget about it.'  
A nerve twanged angrily in her head as he finished his sentence.  
'Hey!' She shouted. 'I am not a kid! I hate being cooped up here! I hate my room! I hate my life! I hate being treated like I'm a freaking six year old!'  
And then she said something that she, raised in a house like hers, should never have said, and slammed the phone down. Switched it off, and threw it away so he couldn't call back.  
She did catch the irony of her losing her temper so easily being very much child like, but she didn't care._

_Father sighed. Ashley smiled, instinctively before straightening her face again.  
'And that would be why you have been running then...' Father said. 'Should have suspected. Damn my years...'  
What followed, Ashley remembered, was an argument. Not a loud one – you don't do loud arguments in a (ex) presidents household, so she thought and was taught. But one where Ashley was proud to say she savagely fought her ground.  
When she went up to bed, having irritated mom and dad so much they had grounded her, she sat on her bed and looked in the mirror, no longer irritated by what she saw, and beamed. She felt like she didn't recognise herself. It felt good, to be looking at the new Ashley.  
What had happened to her?_

**********************************************  
  
As her thoughts wandered backwards a forwards, thinking about everything that had taken her here, she saw the city, drawing close. There was a scattering of small skyscrapers, dwarfs compared to the towering city blocks that Ashley had seen in New York, the smaller buildings clustered around these. As the city drew rapidly closer, she could see cranes in the distance, between two of the skyscrapers, their iron gridding hanging in the sky.

Suddenly, the helicopter slowed.  
'High command.' The pilot called. 'This is bug 1, followed by bug 2 and bug 3. We are beginning descent on the target area.'  
Ashley didn't know much about Salt Lake city, and was looking down upon a strange land to her as the chopper descended on route 48. She could see small cafe's, a club. Every so often there would be a house. Now, that was almost as much as she knew about the area. Almost.  
She cleared her throat and opened the comms of the unit once more. Trying to steady her voice. This would not just be her first field operation. It was the entire units first operation. All had been practice before now, no matter how realistic their commanders may have tried to make the training.  
'Salt Lake city...has a population of over one hundreds and eighty thousand in the city area alone. The greater urban area including Salt Lake city has a population of over one and a half million...think about these numbers before you think about your own. We _must _complete this mission.'  
With a deep breath, Ashley closed the comms.

**************************************************

_'Shit.'  
That, was the first time in a very long while that Ashley had sworn. But then, she had a reasonable justification. She was dead. Her shotgun lying useless by her side, she having been hewed apart by a crazed man with an axe.  
It was only an exercise, true enough. But if it had been out in the field..._  
_Reluctantly, she got up. The exercise was over. Her team of five had lost out to thirty 'practice' Ganado, ambushed and eliminated in the dark of the forest. The other four, three of the guys and a girl, hive fived – they had let just two Ganado live this time. They saw her wandering towards them. They evidently thought she was taking this too seriously.  
'Oh come-on Ash! We did okay...a big improvement on the last time actually.' Biggins noted, giving her a wry smile. 'I thought we did good.'  
'Yeah.' Killy said, her bunk mate with her arms folded. 'Team C go!'  
At that, Ashley smiled._

_Her mistake.  
Far too late they noticed the hulking form of Ian walking towards them. One of the soft axes in his hands. Ian was their commander and trainer, and Ashley always wondered if he had been a dinosaur in a previous life. He was, to put it simply, brutal, and he was again about to demonstrate this.  
Biggins was the first to go. Ian slammed the soft axe into the back of his thigh, casting the tall squad leader to the ground. And Killy was the next. Half heartedly she tried to stop the attack, stunned by the situation, and Ian headbutted her, she holding her bleeding nose as she fell.  
Luckily for Ashley, Carl and Yaya, that was where Ian stopped his brutality. With his arms at least._

_'Why, the FUCK, were you celebrating!' He screamed into Carls face. 'Did you think that was good? Did you think that was worthy of FUCKING high fives!! That was a DISGRACE! Do you not UNDERSTAND WHAT WE ARE DOING HERE?! You are not only all dead, you have also let thousands of OTHER people die! DO YOU THINK I AM JOKING PRIVATE ANUS!'  
He had evidently decided that Yaya was his next target for his attack, screaming full on in his face. Trying to maintain a straight, fearless face, Ashley was begging Yaya, jokey and laid back by nature, not to laugh. To her relief he did not.  
'I DO NOT THINK YOU ARE JOKING SIR!  
'FUCKING GOOD!' Ian screamed back, pushing Yaya to the ground with, it seemed, a mere flick of a hand. 'In a field operation, YOU WILL NOT GET TO GET BACK UP AGAIN AND SCREW YOUR HEAD BACK ON, IS THAT CLEAR?!'  
'YES SIR!' They all hollered back.  
'IN THE FIELD, YOU WILL NOT GET TO HIGH FIVE, BECAUSE IF YOU DO, I WILL EXECUTE YOU MYSELF! IS THAT CLEAR!'  
'YES SIR!'_

_Later the day, as the night drew in, Ashley walked the forest. Trying to shake off the shame of the day.  
After the brutalising by Ian, they had been brought back to base camp. Made to do press ups, while mud was poured over them. The rest of the trainees at the camp watched and laughed, although Ashley was convinced that Ian had made them do it.  
Then they were given goggles and sentenced to shooting by paintball squad.  
Ashley was almost tempted to let go of the pistol in her hands and feel the bruises she had on her thigh, stomach, and even jaw – the paintballing had been only for a few seconds, but it was enough. She felt a glimmer of satisfaction in the fact that she didn't cry out.  
But the temptation to nurse her wounds was tempered by the thought that she was being followed.  
Calm, she continued to walk. She dropped her gun a little lower, trying to give the illusion of being relaxed._

_Whoever was following her was quiet, very quiet. But Ashley had dodged mad psychotic stalkers before. Whoever this was didn't have a prayer of catching her off guard.  
She walked past a tree and softly pressed herself against the other side. Listening for the steps. They came, a tip toeing pit pat of feet. Ashley slipped around the tree, knowing she was turning him, she was the one now behind him. She had a window of attack.  
In the moment that the attacker couldn't see her, had no clue where she was, Ashley pounced. Directly behind him, she raised the pistol, aiming for the back of his head, and pulled the trigger.  
_Click.  
_The gun was empty.  
But of course, Ashley knew this._

_'That makes it something like...seven – five to me.'  
'Only because you cheat.' Jermaine said, turning around with his hands raised in surrender.  
'All is fair in love and war.' Ashley said with a smirk.  
'Fair point.' Jermaine agreed. Two short sticks in his hands. He tossed one to Ashley, who caught it in-between two of her fingers.  
'One hour.' He said. 'Then back to camp. God knows what Ian would do if he caught you out this late.'  
'Probably just punch me.' Ashley said. Not even half joking.  
For the next forty minutes or so, they traded blows with the short sticks, improvised blunt knives. Making weaving patterns, trying to outfox the other with movement, strike quickly and then retreat. They could also use their free hands to block the others knife strike, only to find their own attack stopped by the others well placed iron grip._

_'The trick...' Jermaine said. 'Is not to get stabbed.'  
'Oh?' Ashley said. 'I thought it was for you.'  
'Hey.' He said. 'I'm the master here.'  
Ashley would have argued the point, but knew she didn't have much backing on that particular point. Jermaine didn't look it, but he was devilishly quick, struck with precision, and toyed with her like a cat with a mouse. Ashley liked to think she was in fact improving though.  
Her ears pricked.  
She ignored the jab at her chest, letting it hit her. She had heard something, a sound far too much like the pit pat of feet.  
In a second, she had her gun out of her holster, pointing it into the dark.  
But after a few moments she realised that if there had been anyone there before, they certainly weren't now. Whoever it was had fled.  
'We...we should get back.' Jermaine said, whispering it as if afraid someone nearby would recognize his voice.  
'Yeah...we should get back.'_

***************************************

'Rank up!' Ashley said calmly into her mike, as after what seemed like hours the helicopter touched down off route 48. 'Two by two! Team mates side by side!'  
They had landed outside what looked like a factory, or at least a firm of some sort. The windows loomed ominously in the air, spotlights searching the windows for anything for the BSAA's small force to be wary of. Nearby, bug 2 landed, while high above bug 3 hung, ropes falling from its rear.  
Over the comms, came a familiar voice, to Ashley anyway. 'Bug squads 1, 2 and 3, this is high command.'  
Ingrid Hunnigan. Ashley had heard her voice every so often in Spain. It was only when she had returned home that she met the businesslike woman, who's first words to her were comments on the change in her physical condition since her kidnapping. Ashley had been in such a good mood at the time, she couldn't help but laugh. Every so often, they would talk, and it was only after a few meetings that Ashley realised how good she was.

'In the time between Leon arriving in Pueblo and the time when communications were jammed...' She said. '...Leon fired one hundred and thirty three handgun shots, seventy nine double barrelled shotgun shots, and four hundred and one sub machine gun shots. Only fourty three percent of those overall shots were fatal.'

At first it had made Ashley feel extremely awkward to talk about the whole experience again. But as she had seen Ingrid more, she couldn't help but become fascinated. She had stats about everything to do with the mission. She even knew how many wounds Leon had taken, how much weight he had lost in pursuit of Ashley, and somewhat chillingly, a general thorough analysis of how lucky Leon was to be alive.

Oddly, it made Ashley feel a little better that, not only was Hunnigan playing the role of mission controller, but that she would by now know just about everything there was to know about this building.  
'The building in which the bomb is situated is an office block. From ground floor to top floor, the majority of the building is office cubicles. In case, I would recommend either using grenades to detroy these cubicles in order to eliminate as much cover as possible, or in the case of a range to range fight, use flash grenades to advance on any entrenched resistance. However, we do not expect resistance. As far as we can tell there is extremely limited, if any resistance whatsoever. None the less, we follow proceduce. On go, bug team 1 enters North West side of the building. On go two, bug team 2 enters the South East side of the building. On go three, bug three will enter through the stairwell entrance on the roof. '  
Ashley looked up to the helicopter on the roof, where bug 3 slid down the ropes in efficient fashion. She half wondered if Jermaine, who was with that squad, would do so well without her. Half of her wondered how well she would do without him.  
But then she heard Ians angry voice on the roof, demanding they line, and her will hardened.  
'We are not sure if this is merely a desperate ploy by Wesker to cause another incident or something more, so be cautious. Watch for traps in particular. Trip wire, USM's, and the like.'  
Ashley watched the building, her unit gathered behind her.  
'Good luck.' Killy whispered over her shoulder.

***********************************

_All was chaos.  
Lights flashed and crackled, electrical wires spitting sparks from plugs. Except for these random flashes of light, the building was a ruin. Only Ashleys tiny pistol light gave her any indication of the ground ahead. Rubble from where the roof had collapsed to her right. Shrieks from the stairwell in front of her. Guttural noises that reminded her all too starkly of Spain._

_Up the stairs came a zombie. It half ran half stumbled, hungry for her flesh. Its arms reaching for her arms, trying to scratch her with those deadly, infected fingers.  
Ashley struck first. She dropped her pistol in order to grab its throat, pressing in closer to it so that its hands, which scraped at her back couldn't penetrate her armour. With her another hand, she whipped out her knife with a flick, plunging it into the back of its neck.  
The zombie collapsed, dead within a second of it climbing the stairs.  
But Ashley couldn't rest on her laurels. She picked the gun up again and was retreating from the stairs, spinning as she did to check her surroundings. From the dark – another. This time ganados. The plagas, Ashley knew, within the rib cage, behind the other organs, pushing them forward while at the same time manipulating the brain. Its black robes had almost made Ashley miss it, but for her torch light glancing off the metal of the large flail it carried. Ashley retreated well out of range, taking time to aim. Firing off a shot that made it drop the flail. Then, she shot out its knee caps. It took time to destroy the plagas, time she didn't have - she was being hunted from every direction._

_She ran towards the corner, looking to create herself more open ground. Her mistake.  
She moaned helpless as suddenly she felt something wrap around her face. Blinding her, suffocating her. Making her deaf to the world...she fell to her knees, completely exposed...this was it.  
Game over.  
The tongue fell off her face. The lights flickered on in the BSAA's ruined terrain training building.  
Again she swore, swearing again as she wondered what father would think of her swearing. Sighing, she saw what had 'killed' her.  
Its head pulsed with tough membrane, its tongue slathering across the floor. Its skinless body pulsed with running blood, its bulky muscle heaving like they were breathing. And its front claws dug into the concrete, each talon as long as one of Ashley's shins.  
Licker. It unnerved her to look at it. It looked so...real. In fact it was a very well made up robot, using metal wire within the tongue to control its trajectory and how it had just wrapped its...slime covered tongue around her face.  
Ashley shuddered as she wiped off the slime, hearing someone's footsteps behind her.  
She turned to see the hulking form of Ian, the Ganado and the zombie she had 'killed' on this level leaving down the stairs behind him._

_It was hard to judge what he was thinking sometimes. His face was unreadable, like glass.  
Eventually, he asked. 'How do you think you did?'  
Ashley said the first thing that came to her head.  
'I died.' She said.  
'Everyone dies in here.' He replied.  
'I could have done better.' Ashley said back. It was true. Those last moments of the test were a failure of wits. She had panicked, rushed the corner and paid.  
'Yup. Your composure was good initially, but it needs to be maintained. You could have lasted a few more minutes if you had kept your positional sense. You should have angled around the corner, watched for the enemy. And against a licker...you must always strike first. Most failures in this exercise fail because the Lickers tongue strike prevents them fighting to full capability, for those few seconds that are enough for it to close and finish you. Remember that.'  
Ashley nodded. '...How did I do?'  
Again, Ian affixed her with that stare._

_'I might tell you if you stop practicing your knife play at night. You are going to need your energy over these coming weeks, mark me. Your ability with the knife is no longer at the point where it will be markedly improved to the point that losing an hours sleep is worthwhile.'  
It was at that moment that Ashley knew who had been following her and Jermaine into the woods.  
'Okay.' She said, not bothering to state the obvious.  
'Okay.' Ian said. 'I will say that you did okay. You are in interesting company.'  
Ashley nodded, accepting his assessment.  
'Now go.' Ian said. 'I have more jumped up morons to train.'  
Ashley departed in the safe knowledge that she wasn't one of them.  
_

_**************************  
_

Killy strapped the door with small bombs, designed to blow off the hinges. Ashley watched on with the rest of the group.  
'Remember what Hunnigan said.' Ashley said, turning to address her group. 'Be cautious, but _don't _just be cautious. You have to watch every shadow, every possible manner of attack. And watch your partners back.'  
Ashley was never sure if they listened or not. This troubled her. She was picked as captain because she was the best in this unit, apparently. But if she couldn't be a good captain, then the unit could be compromised...  
That thought nagged at the back of her mind as she turned back around to the door, Killy standing back with the door wired.  
There was something else as well. Ashley couldn't quite distinguish a smell in the air, one that didn't fit.  
_5...  
4...  
3...  
_She thought back to her last three years, the memories flashing through her psyke. Remembering each time she had been outdone, by Jermaine, by Ian, by others in her group. Remembering each, remembering to not make the same mistake twice.  
But as the door fell, the bombs blowing it off the hinges, and the 'GO!' order came from Hunnigan, the mission controller who accounted for every eventuality, Ashley couldn't help but wonder if everything was truly accounted for and watched for, as they filed quickly into the office block.

End of chapter 2


	3. Chapter 3

Author Notes: Okay to the folks who are reading this. Its waay overdue, but the chapter was spiralling out of control - if you think the last one was big, then this one was going to be gargantuan. So I cut it in half, and might re write what I have of the next chapter, having the oppurtunity and all.  
Thing is even this opening part of the story is really merely a prelude. I have big plans for this first story of mine, something to encompass alot of characters, and move the story forward from Weskers death.  
So I hope you enjoy this. In the next chapter, the action begins properly. And that I mean very much.

**Chapter 3: The signals**

So far, everything was to plan.  
Hicker, above all else, was a businessman. He played the stock market on wall street and regularly made millions in a single day, and although every so often he would lose a few million in the main he was successful. That had stopped, in the recent months because of the general climate, but that was far from his only money base. Recently, he had sold his business in oil to take on a far more interesting project. It had required a fair sum of his money, although not too much – his associates had 'acquired' the technology required for this newest venture from somewhere or other, and in any case he wasn't really concerned enough to worry about it. It was a venture that occasionally made him lose sleep in anticipation of it. One that would test his acumen...but one that would be rewarding for the sheer pursuit of it. A game he would surely grow to love.

He looked out of his window. The fog overhead was a grim sight to see, as were the rugged ants below. If it wasn't for the sound proof windows, he may have gone mad by now for the commotion. But circumstances required he be here, and in any case, here there would be no shortage of entertainment from him here.  
He switched on his television. His television was a unique one, an interactive 50 inch wide screen which showed the schematics of a particular building in Salt Lake City, on route 48. There were small green dots for the cameras that would show him in high quality detail what was going on at any particular moment. All he had to do was click the numbers for that camera on his remote, and he would see the image from that camera in a moment. He marvelled at how this operation was being run. He marvelled at how easily he would be able to pull the strings.  
Through the ground floor of the building moved forty blue dots, which Hicker knew were the BSAA, currently breaking and entering this office block. They would find no resistance in their methodical, efficient but ultimately slow exploration of the buildings three floors. Even now as they had entered the building they split into their formations, orders and tactics drilled into their heads until they knew them like machines. Formations which slowed them down. In a smaller complex the manoeuvres would be fine, but not in a giant office block like this one. New recruits on their first assignment however, would barely know better. Even with the third team about to enter onto the third floor, they would be too slow.  
Because there, on the third floor, detailed with a orange 3D 'x' on the screen, was their bomb. Hidden away, but loud enough to inform the BSAA of its presence. But still enough to slow them down.  
Oh. And then there was the white dot, of the woman that his aides had met before. The one they could track. Ashley Graham.  
Enough, he suddenly realised, casting away his fascination with the screen to flip open his satellite phone. Speed dialling a pre-programmed number.

*********************************

Chris Redfield slept, even as the helicopter came within a mile of the ship. So too did Jill, her head resting on Shevas shoulder, she accepting it without much thought. She staying very much awake, and alert. For her, it seemed to always be this way. It had been a part of her growing up in relative poverty, losing her parents...  
From the moment she had been assigned to this mission to now, she hadn't really closed her eyes. It wasn't her way, to loosen or relax. And so, she found herself looking at Redfield sleep with something approaching concern.  
What did those bags under his eyes mean? What did his look of genuine contentment mean? What had he really meant when he had said 'it's over'? Sheva, since joining the BSAA, had never considered the job _ever_ over. It had been endless small incidents in the run up to stopping Wesker- violent riots occurring in small towns, a governor slaughtered by a bubbling, skinless monster, which she had had to put down personally. The mission she had just taken on with Chris was the most extensive, but she knew there would be more. And she wondered if Chris, after all his years, had had enough. Whether he would retire from the service, become a policeman back in America. Whether Jill would join him, and they would never fight for the world again. Live happy, carefree lives. The-  
Sheva suddenly had to re-gather her thoughts as she realised she was letting paranoid thoughts spiral out of control. She suddenly noticed her fists bunched in her lap, and was almost taken aback.

For a terrible moment, she wondered if those bunched fists had anything to do with the blonde sleeping on her shoulder.  
The helicopter began its descent. Suddenly, the roaring of the rotor blades came back to her. The ship below, the sailors rushing about deck. Soldiers waiting to escort the three to debriefing and comfortable rooms. Which of course Chris and Jill would enjoy...  
She kicked Chris awake, harder then she meant to. Or maybe she wanted to find out if he was softening already.  
He awoke as if he had closed his eyes for a second. He smiled at Sheva. 'Did you have to kick me?' Me murmured, weakly.  
'You didn't hear me mouthing.' Sheva said. Chris smile broadened.  
'Are we home yet?' He murmured again.  
Sheva didn't find his joke as funny as he found hers.

Jill finally awoke as the helicopter touched the ground, but didn't say anything to her or Chris as they hopped down from the plane onto a metal deck, the wind buffeting Sheva's shoulders, sending chills down her back.  
Ahead of them waited a soldier. Unarmed, unguarded, saluting Chris Redfield, herself, and Jill qith a quick flick of the hand to each.  
It annoyed Sheva to see that the soldier had no protection whatsoever. They could be infected, for all he knew. For all She and Chris knew, Sheva glancing at Jill as again angry thoughts wandered through her ears, she _could well _be infected.  
As if reading her thought, Sheva heard Chris speak louder, she only just beginning to hear a few words of Chris' and the soldiers conversation.  
'Take her to a medic and have her checked.' He said. 'I want to know if there are any problems.'  
'Negative sir. You are all to be taken to the bridge for re-briefing.'  
'...re-briefing?' Chris said, almost in disbelief. Again, ,Sheva heard that tone in his voice. That tiredness...perhaps.  
'Why?' Chris asked. 'Is there another situation?'  
'It appears that when Wesker died, something on his aircraft, perhaps, sent numerous signals into orbit.' The soldier said. 'We know one destination of the signal, but we suspect the signal went to numerous locations. You must all come down to the bridge.'

Sheva didn't follow for a moment.  
She looked back towards the helicopter.  
In the cockpit, her teacher, Josh Stone. Leaning back in his seat as the helicopter was refuelled.  
Sheva was confused for a moment. Then, it dawned on her. _He was leaving.  
_Josh noticed her, watching him in his cockpit. He smiled, a little like Chris had on the way here. He waved. _I will be seeing you soon.  
_It hit her. He was going back to the African BSAA, to tell them of what had happened out on the devil island.  
She quickly waved, before rushing to catch up to the others who were walking on toward the ship's bridge without her. Feeling empty, as if she had just lost her only friend.

*********************************

'Bug squad three have entered the third floor. Check for resistance, and then move to meet up with Bug squad three on the third floor.'  
'Understood Hunnigan.' Ashley confirmed. 'Move.' She muttered to her group, who split from their battle formation to search the entrance hall. A curved desk formed the welcoming reception, to either side two liftsthat would go up to the other levels. But Ashley knew that they couldn't take the lifts. If the power was to go on the way up...  
The team had already searched the reception. But there were a number of more rooms to search before they could even get to the second floor.  
But even as she thought this, the comm crackled.  
'Bug squads 1 and 2, you are moving too slowly. We advise you search lightly and move quickly towards rendezvous.'  
'Understood. Pick it up!' Ashley called, the squad slowly speeding up their search.  
There was an uncomfortable pang within her stomach as she repeated 'Pick it up!' the squad doing so at the second time of asking.  
'Hunnigan.' She said, activating the mike. 'Alert me of any disturbances on the first or second floors. Keep a close eye.'  
'As always, Captain.'  
Ashley felt the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach fade.  
'I want the next room searched in less then a minute and a half!' She called. 'Understand?'  
None answered, except for Killy, who gave her a short nod.  
'And anyone who isn't at the far end stairs in a minute and a half, I will shoot myself! Understood?'  
Again, no answer. Infuriatingly, Ashley thought she heard one of them snigger. Knew who it would be. Degen, with his spiked hair and sharp nose, had hated her ever since he had met her. She had never found out why.  
With anger flowing through her like electrical charge, Ashley charged through the next door.

**************************************

The bridge was an old fashioned one. Chris couldn't help but let his mind wander back to Weskers boat, and the computer equipment that laced the bridge of that particular ship, and its bridge.  
Compared, this bridge was a ship of devices, most of which Chris didn't know what they were, or what they were even used for. None the less, the place was busy. A dozen sailors were watching on sentinel like, watching devices, listening for communication from the deck below or eyeing the horizon for threats. Usually in this area, pirates. Although the ships crew weren't entirely trusting of Chris, Jill or Sheva either. As they had left to helicopter pad, they had been swiftly inspected and stripped of weapons. If he was honest, Chris knew, it was nothing more than expected, and Sheva had handed over her weapons with barely a second glance, watching Jill with something that could be best described as 'caution'.  
Chris' moment of observing the deck was cut swiftly short by the voice of Commander Eddens.  
'Redfield.' He said. 'We have important information for you.'  
'I heard.' Chris said, looking around the deck, surprised it could even detect signals at all. 'What exactly did you detect?'  
'We marked Weskers plane crashing upon the devil island some hour ago. Four minutes later, the signal began. It appears that Wesker activated the signal when he knew for sure his plane was down. Then eight minutes later the signal stopped.  
That was no coincidence, Chris realised.  
Seven minutes later, the rockets had plunged into Weskers deformed body. Seven minutes later, what was left of Wesker would have been quickly melted to nothingness by the lava.  
'We suspect that he activated a pulse line.' Eddens said. 'When the line is connected, the receiving goes into a standby mode. When the signal stops, the receiving is activated.'  
'So the signal went to a machine?' Jill asked, to the affirmative from Eddens. 'I never heard anything from Wesker about this...and why would he? He was certain that the plan would succeed.'  
'Yet he didn't.' Sheva said, Chris turning to her to see a strange glint in her eye. 'We stopped him, we killed him.'  
'Yes...' Jill said, flustered. 'But he thought that there was no chance of that. He _wouldn't _activate such a signal.  
'Well he _obviously did.'_ Sheva replied.  
But before their argument could develop further, a pealing ring sounded around the bridge. Once.  
A soldier at the back of the room picked up a phone, another old fashioned piece Chris noticed, and began talking low into it, as if relaying orders.  
'Soldier!' Eddens called. 'Who is it?'  
'Hold please...' The soldier muttered into his piece, before answering the commander. 'I don't know sir. But he wants to talk to Chris Redfield.'

************************************

For a moment, just a moment, Ashley considered relaxing.  
It didn't seem like there was anything there to be found. Her squad searched quickly, checking rooms and offices in a ten second limit. As thirty seconds passed, it occurred to Ashley that they were facing no resistance whatsoever, and they had already swiftly searched the first floor, very much within her set time limit of a minute and a half. Now they searched the second floor, their half of the office block, and less than thirty seconds had passed before Ashley decided they would find nothing at all.  
_But she mustn't think like that, _Ashley thought as she checked cubicle after cubicle. _All it would take was one mistake...  
_But she had gone too far the other way. By the time she arrived at the other end, she faced her entire unit, with a sneering Degen at their head.  
'Ten seconds late Ashley...' He called, as she finished checking.  
'Move.' She snapped. 'Upstairs. We have a rendezvous to appear to.'  
'Well we won't get there with you being so slow.' Degen said. 'Maybe we need a new captain.'  
'Move before I shoot you.' Ashley threatened. Staring him dead in the face.  
He laughed and walked up the stairs. A few moments later, the rest of the group followed.  
_Why...oh why..._ Ashley thought, _...must I be a president's daughter?  
_She followed the unit up the stairs, watching the shadows carefully, before leaping steps to catch her unit.  
On the final level, there was a loud beep-beep-beep.  
In the middle of the cubicles, surrounded by bug three, was an ominous orange glow.  
'Defensive positions.' She ordered. 'Guns on the stairwell.'  
They moved slowly into position. Degen gave her a wink before departing to his position. Ashley couldn't help but watch his retreating back, felt helpless but to listen to him callously undermine her authority.  
Or at least, what of it she had left.

She walked briskly over to bug three, noticing that bug two were also carefully deployed over the opposite stairwell. But before she could come within more the five metres of whatever it was that bug three surrounded, a familiar face cut her off en-route.  
'We have this captain.' Said Ian, his face grim. His voice grew louder, as he addressed the entire force on floor three.  
'Our radiation bomb is in place. You would be well advised to take your units down to a lower level. We have no idea when or even if this bomb will detonate...'  
Ashley noticed the beeps, which seemed to speed up and slow down almost randomly. It was extremely unnerving to listen to the beeps speed up to almost a single long beep, like a death tone, only for them to slow down again.  
'If the bomb detonates, we expect bug 1 and bug 2 to be out of the area as quickly as possible. There will be no staying behind to die valiantly for no cause. BSAA will alert the Authorities to a radiation spill and they will clean up the mess...am I understood?'  
Ashley didn't need to reply. She simply turned to her unit and ordered them.  
'Move out.'  
She wondered if they would move quicker now they had potentially imminent death as a motivation. She would have to try and utilise it.  
But before any of her unit could move an inch, a loud voice echoed through the office block, reverberating off all sides of the giant room. One that every single member of the BSAA would recognise.  
'Hello...pitiful recruits of a doomed organization.' Came the curt, pitiless voice of Albert Wesker.

'Am I talking to Chris Redfield?'  
Chris had no recognition of the voice, although it could have easily been distorted by the signal, and the line. He sounded smooth, American. He sounded like a salesman, or a lawyer, supremely confident in their own abilities. Chris trusted neither.  
'I will repeat.' He said. 'Am I talking to the esteemed Chris Redfield, escapee of the Raccoon city incident, establisher of the United Nations organization BSAA, and responsible for the tracking down and termination of the terrorist, Albert Wesker?'  
It was a odd voice to listen to. It sounded respectful, sounded genuine. But Chris didn't trust a single syllable the man spoke. There was something behind his voice, a sinister arrogance that didn't slide well in Chris' ears.  
'...This is Chris Redfield.'  
'Ahh, so it is...it is a pleasure.'  
Maybe it was just him, but was there a drawling behind his voice? A fakery to his greeting?  
'Tell me Chris Redfield, did you ever play chess?'  
'I...I was more the jock myself.' Chris said. 'Who is this?'  
'Well then you will have never seen the intricate trading of blows. The trading of one piece for another. The recognition of value on each piece. So tell me Chris Redfield, do you lose your queen in exchange for your opponents queen, or would you prefer to keep your queen but acknowledge that damage would be done?'  
'Who is this?' Chris demanded to know. 'Tell me your name!'  
'What does my name matter?' The American asked, sudden biting anger coming out in his words. 'What could you learn if I lied about my name..._nothing._ So, Mister Redfield, I have a proposal for you, and I urge you to consider it.'

Chris didn't answer. Jill and Sheva stared at him, their argument forgotten. Eddens was speaking quietly to someone beneath deck, while in his other hand listening to one of his devices near the bridge window.  
Chris was distracted long enough for his caller to grow impatient. 'Redfield! Are you there? There is plenty to depend on it...' At this point, Chris could hear a maddening laughter, one that boiled in his blood.  
'What do you want?' Chris demanded, his voice suddenly louder. The American seemed completely unperturbed.  
'Mister Redfield...' He began again. 'At this precise moment Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance troops are raiding an office block on 48 street in Salt Lake City, looking for a bomb that will infect the surrounding area of Salt Lake city with _my virus_.'  
'They, to put it simply, have walked into a trap. I therefore offer you an option Chris.'  
The Americans voice began to boom as he reached his offer. 'Disband the BSAA, with immediate effect! Or every BSAA recruit within that building will die, including the former presidents daughter Ashley Graham!'  
Chris' jaw dropped. So too, did Eddens' looking up from his devices.  
'You-'  
'in addition...' The American continued. '...to the vast majority of the population of Salt Lake city and the surrounding area!'  
Each statement hit Chris like a hammer blow. Each one leaving him lost for words.  
'And...' The American continued. 'If you _do _disband the BSAA, with immediate effect, then you will never hear from me again. If you agree, and _don't..._well...it might come round on yeh...'  
Chris grew angry once more at his laughter, but as he thought of some way to rebuke him, he couldn't. He didn't dare call the man's bluff and do nothing. He just _didn't dare. _  
'So...what is it to be?' The American asked, Chris sure he was trying not to laugh. 'Your queen or your pawns? Decide quickly – I have little patience. About a ten second patience to be precise...'

Chris tried to gather his thoughts as he tried to think of the time counting down. Thoughts of the weapons being unleashed in Raccoon City, the attacks across stricken African countries. Oroboros devastating thousands of lives. His force, the force he had helped establish, its protection against protecting hundreds of thousands of lives.  
'Two, one, and..._zero _Mister Redfield.' The American sneered. 'So...what is your decision?'  
Chris knew his choice. He said it before thinking of its consequences. He couldn't.  
'Go to hell.'  
Then he threw the satellite phone across the bridge.  
He turned to the others as the phone clanged against the metal floor. Jill and Sheva looked stunned. Eddens looked at Chris with a mixture of alarm and despair.  
'Try and contact the US BSAA branch.' Chris asked him. 'Try and send a warning.'  
But he already knew it was too late.

***************************************

Ashley had been to more classes then she could count on identification and neutralisation of the BOW's that the BSAA knew of. Every so often, they would suddenly get new classes, as new BOW's were discovered, and after a week or two of increased classes that sometimes went deep into the night, they would know everything about the new BOW. Height off the ground, which attack it would use, depending on your own position and distance. How to identify it, weak points, when to attack, when to retreat. Strengths of the enemy, and how to nullify them.  
Instinctively, as she heard Wesker within the room, she recalled one particular class about the man himself, and quickly thought of her own basic facts about him.  
_Height: Roughly 1.8 metres. She couldn't remember precisely.  
How to identify: Wesker never takes his sunglasses off, expect for brief moments. Possibly blind in well lit areas without them.  
Methods of attack: Wesker has superhuman strength and speed beyond and living thing in existence, although he can also utilise a gun.  
Weaknesses: None confirmed.  
When to attack: You must always retreat in the event of encountering Albert Wesker. If you are lucky, he will decide not to hurt you. Few have crossed him and lived.  
_

Everyone who had been to those lessons, knew who was speaking. Ashley wondered if their blood was going anywhere near as cold. Her breathing became shallow as she realised, for all of her training, now she was just as vulnerable as she was those long four years ago.  
_But... _Ashley remembered something she had heard on the chopper here, something the pilot had been telling her. Something she hadn't really been listening to at the time.  
_...We are going to Salt lake city, route 48. A company building there has been evacuated because of a suspected bomb threat. This bomb activated within two minutes of the death of Albert Wesker...  
_That couldn't be true...could it?  
Then Ashley turned back to bug three. They were gathered around where the bomb was. There was no more orange glow. Now it was more like she saw from a TV in her house, various colours of flaring light smeared on their faces.  
Instinctively, Ashley walked over.  
There, on a small screen upon the bomb, was Weskers sneering face.  
'If you have this message, Commander Ian Guntam, you have failed. Millions will die. You will die; along with those insects you call soldiers. I tell you this...not because I have any mercy, or pity for your soldiers, but because I am enjoying imagining the look on your face as you receive this message.'  
Weskers face filled the screen, and it leant backward, smelling the air with his supremely confident smile.  
'I do wonder, Ian...' Wesker said. 'What they will tell dear Hannah. Or your two darling children...Freddie is ones name? He plays with aeroplanes. He idolises you, poor _unworthy child_.'  
Ashley felt sick as she looked at the back of Ian's head. Couldn't bear to imagine what he was going through right now. But he made no movements. He didn't walk away. He didn't smash the monitor. He watched.

'And you? What are _you doing here? _You should be at home in your country house, behind those black bars. Did you grow so tired of your old weak father and your lifeless mother that you chose to come here to die? Can you hear me...I AM TALKING TO YOU! ASHLEY GRAHAM!'  
A few faces turned towards her, as her guts felt like they were shrivelling inside her abdomen.  
'You...' Wesker said softly, and Ashley felt like from behind those glasses, behind that small screen, he was staring into her, smelling her fear. '...they will enjoy you, Ashley. They will enjoy your screams as they kill you. Do you think you have grown up? Do you think you are strong?' He chuckled. 'You are just another who's demise I have brought around. You... are the weakest of them all.'  
Ashley her fingers flex. Wanting suddenly to prove how much she had grown. But her thoughts tempered the desire.  
_You _are _weak. What did you think you would achieve by joining the BSAA? Your team...they don't even view you as an _equal. _They look _down _on you...  
_Wesker had moved on.  
'And to the rest of you...you cowards hiding among babe lions...there is no point in running. The alarms have already begun to ring...goodbye pitiful recruits.'  
Wesker was gone in another instant. The televisions switched off.  
The next thing Ashley heard was _Deactivated._  
A pleasant womans voice made the announcement from the speaker from which Wesker just spoke. Someone whooped in Ashleys unit. She didn't bother to shoot them a glare.  
'Sir...' said Jermaine, seeing him raising Ashleys spirits again. He was examining the arcade console sized device fingering through wires and circuits. 'Sir...'  
Ian took a moment to answer 'What?'  
'Sir, this machine has blown its own circuits.' He said. '...it was a dud.'_  
_None of the force had an instant to whoop again before the alarms above their heads began to ring.

******************************

_The air exploded. The ground upon which they stood shook. They died, with barely a hiss in passing.  
Something had exploded above them. They could hear the fall of rubble.  
It took a few mere seconds for the explosions to stop echoing through their ears. They could already hear something above...a siren call...  
Without a moment's hesitation they began to move, splitting into packs for each new entrance suddenly appeared above them. The echoes of the alarms reached them from far away, the reverberations of the explosions allowing them to see and know their route up to the new life. They crawled across every surface, clambering over each other to get to their destination...  
They were hungry.  
_

******************************

On Hickers interactive screen everything was changing.  
He had assumed that when Chris had said 'go to hell' that he was rejecting Hickers offer, which was a shame. Chris was smarter than that it seemed, but Hickers still had him well trapped, the black king surrounded by white pieces.  
And they had the recruits well trapped.  
Flashing white dots on the third floor signified that the alarms were ringing there. HIckers estimated that his partners had probably removed them.  
Hickers had also estimated that having put a 'bomb' in the top of the office block, that was exactly where BSAA would go. The bait drew them to the roof, and now they were about to pay for their lax searching.  
Bombs detonated on the ground floor. They ripped three craters into the ground floor of the building, set to as to achieve the downward force required to obliterate the wooden ground works.  
It didn't destroy the building. It wasn't supposed to.  
HIckers could help but laugh as he saw the red dots, suddenly appearing on the ground floor in three different packs. Hickers counted at least sixty, and increasing.  
Hickers used the remote to look at them with the cameras, and burst into almost hysterical laughter.  
The recruits stood no chance. No chance at all.

****************************

'Hunnigan!' Ashley shouted, over the alarms that bellowed their dim into her ears. 'Communicate!'  
No answer.  
'HUNNIGAN!'  
'You've been tricked! ...bombs under the ground flooring!..'  
'Is the building going to fall!?' Ashley shouted into her mike, for a moment hearing nothing but mumbling, turning up her comm volume with a flick of a small gear on the headphone. 'HUNNIGAN!'  
'The building integrity hasn't been compromised! But the bombs released something!'  
'WHAT?'  
'THE BOMBS RELEASED SOMETHING! We cant confirm what, but they're moving towards the stairs! We'll try...'  
Somehow, without hearing what Hunnigan said next, Ashley had an epiphany.  
She looked up at the screaming alarms. She suspected that alarms on the other floors weren't working. Making the alarms the only source of noise within the building.  
'bug one!' she screamed at her unit. 'Blow the cover around the stairwell! Take up defensive cover and ready weapons! BEAD ON THE STAIRWELL!'  
Before Ian, or any other soldier could question her motives, she turned around and screamed. 'LICKERS! LICKERS ARE COMING UP THE STAIRWELLS!'


	4. Chapter 4

Editors Note: Its been a while folks. About three months to be prescise. Sorry about that. I have a a lot of different things in motion, and my attention was only recently drawn back to this recently. But here it is, and its huge again. Nearly 6000 words, but there was a lot to write about. I hope you enjoy this chapter, personally Im not so sure about it, but there is action finally, like all the lack of it from previous chapters has been pent up and released. And this, like I say, is only the beginning.  
One last thing. What do you think so far?  


**Chapter 4: M85**_  
_

_  
They were fully committed, _Hunnigan kept thinking, over and over. _They were fully committed.  
_Sixty BSAA soldiers were located in the upper floor of this building. They were trapped against, her computer calculated, over eighty BOW creatures and rising advancing up the stairwell in such a way that indicated they were moving up the walls and the stairs, which made any barricades the BSAA erected a brief and highly tenuous solution. There were no cameras to observe the precise enemy but she didn't need any. Nor did she need the analysis her centre computers and data zipping across screens all around her to know that precise enemy, and even as she tried desperately to contact the BSAA, her subconscious was drawing up stats and facts.

_Licker B, or the second generation of Lickers has been sighted and fought in Africa in various instances. Unlike its former variant, this Licker can travel in packs _(although never a pack this big, Hunnigan thought, shivers down her spine and goosebumps popping on her arms) - _but is more of an animal then its predecessor, able to breed and act of its own will to a certain extent._

Just like every BOW they had encountered Hunnigan knew everything she could possibly know about the creature, including its expanded muscle mass, its reduced maneuverability, but its much stronger barbed tongue range.  
She also knew the fatality rates.  
Licker B killed 1.6 BSAA for every one of its own death on average. This was much lower then the orgional Licker. But nowdays there were far more Lickers.  
_They were fully commited.  
_Hunnigan couldn't help but wonder how long that group had been down there to grow so large. Couldnt help but know the calculations, and understand the 60 soldiers slim chances.  
_They were fully commited. 80 Lickers multiplied by 1.6 equalled 128.  
_Hunnigan endlessly tried to factor in modifiers – barriers, grenades, animal hesitation by Licker B._  
They were fully commited. 80 Lickers multiplied by 1.6 eqalled 128.  
_This time, the calculations did not lie.  
A piercing alarm of a incoming linkup rang out, and instinctively Hunnigan flicked out a button to turn it on.  
'Hunnigan its a trap-'  
'It's too late.' Hunnigan replied, cutting off the voice of Chris Redfield, whom had hired her to the BSAA in the first place. It broke her heart to say the words that were spilling out of her mouth. But she could do nothing else. 'We cant even evacuate by chopper.'  
'You can! YOU-'  
'The enemy...' Hunnigan cut him off again, the doomsaying calculations spilling off her tongue. 'Can use the stair wells to scale to the roof in roughly twenty seconds. One chopper would take about 35 seconds to evacuate, at maximum speed without taking into account ariel positioning and descent. We couldn't even evacuate one squad, and we would lose any chopper that tried.'  
Redfield didn't answer. Hunnigan knew that he had already realised what they were facing, climbing the stairwells so quickly...  
'Find a way Hunnigan!'  
She reeled from the shock of Redfields aggravated command. She hadn't felt the ire of a superiors anger in years. _Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough...  
_'I will.' Hunnigan promised, foolishly, before terminating the link.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'RETREAT!' Ian screamed, as with several bursts of gunfire alarms were silenced as well as could be. 'CLOSE FORMATION!'  
_Those were the wrong choices, _Ashley wanted to scream.  
It didn't matter. Her squad breezed past her as they scrabbled to obey orders from higher then her, moving backward, kicking over office cubicles to destroy the cover ahead of other cubicle walls being reshuffled to form adequate walling.  
'BEHIND THE BARRIERS! NOW!'  
Ashleys feet ran and leapt her behind the barriers while she wanted to scream how stupid this plan was.

Ian was trying to draw the Lickers across open ground, holding them at bay with the guns and their other equipment, while they closed in from all around.  
Where they would then be the cattle in the paddock, dying crammed behind these flimsy office walls from the barbed tongues. Where chaos would ensue, and the Lickers would slaughter them.  
She looked at Ian, at his wide eyes. Veteran soldier he may have been, but Ashley knew those wide eyes. She had seen them in the people who had met her father.  
_Its an honour, _or _Pleased to be of service, _but it didnt really matter – most had the look in their eye of being out of their depth.  
Ian had that now. Wesker had caused it. Wesker had made him feel small.  
_Wesker had made her feel small.  
_Quashing that thought, she levelled her gun at the centre stairwell, the closest stairwell, where _clickclickclickclickclick_ was now growing louder and louder.  
_Think Ashley, _she told herself. _And think quickly._

Out of nowhere, the first Licker dropped into sight, Ashley squeezing her trigger in bursts.  
A few inches the Licker recoiled and Ashleys spirits rose as she knew she had hit the target with a flurry of shots, hitting its toughened brain and one of its left muscle bound arms.

But the Licker shook those off as if they were grazes, other bullet wounds shook off in similar fashion as it advanced metre upon metre, and more advanced in its wake.  
From the other stairwells, the Lickers grouped and advanced. It was like watching a carpet of death roll towards them, Ashley though suddenly, ludicrously, as she fired more bullets and far too late forced a Licker down, its collapsed body climbed and trampled by others behind.

Others were falling, their blood staining collapsed cubicle wall. But not enough.

Some of them clung to the ceiling, although well placed shots were felling more of those then the ones crawling the gap between them and the horde. Closing the gap too quickly, Ashleys bullets barely registering in her ears amid the deafening roar of gunfire that in itself seemed like barely a slap to the Lickers.  
Ashley saw grenades skitter through the Lickers on the ground, blowing Lickers in every direction, some limbs falling away. Still not enough.  
Ashley saw one too close – it had snuck through the torchlight and shadow, Ashleys desperate, ill aimed bullets tearing through the carpet harmlessly as it struck, it's barbed tongue past Ashley in an instant. Striking through the cubicle wall barrier as if it wasn't there.

'_Ash_...'

Against everything she had been taught, Ashley turned to Killy.  
Her helmet was torn open, and she was already dead.

Ashley screamed as she saw that the barb had torn through her jaw, helmet and then her neck, her blood pouring away as if a dam in her veins had simply disappeared.  
She was pulled over the barrier, her limb body of no weight or consequence to the Licker which had snared its prey.  
'KILLY! NO!' Ashley screamed, but she couldn't hear herself. Everything seemed dulled and muffled, as the Lickers stopped to fight over her friends body? Or was the doomed fight deafening her?  
She didnt know, but her blood suddenly pumped all the harder, and her heart beat all the faster, and adrenaline pumped through her as she fired at the Lickers turning on each other over her friend, fangs sinking into claws, tongues wrapping around muscled necks...and she knew what to do.

Somehow, her brain remained calculated. The thought of Killy was gone instantly as Ashley unhooked two M85's, grenades that could change everything if she threw them in the right place.  
She unhooked one. With one hand she fired her pistol at a Licker getting close, but again it shrugged off the shots, and again it mouth yawned wide, ready to kill her-  
It's barbed tongue exploded out of its mouth, and Ashley felt it impact, felt it tear her side open as she fell behind the barricade-

No. Someone had pushed her aside, the tongue plunging into their shoulder instead. He continued to fire over the barrier, losing the battle to remain up right as the Licker pulled him over the barrier.  
Dropping the grenade, Ashleys knife swiped forwards. It was a weak strike, but it was enough to slice deep into the Lickers appendage and what connection was left tore off, the soldier remaining upright.

She stood up with one of the greandes. She pulled the pin. She chose the destination. She threw. Pulling the wounded soldier down on top of her in the space of a second. She had no longer – she could hear the hissing as if it were the other side of the barrier, waiting to crawl over it and devour them both-  
The flash grenade detonated.  
The ceiling was lit up briefly as if a path to Heaven had opened up in the middle of the Lickers. Just in that instant, Ashley hoped fervently that it was true for Killy.  
Then came the whining dim of the grenade, punctuated by angry hissing and the guns still roaring a noisy dim.

'Thanks rookie!' Degen's shouted, his voice ringing in her ear as he got up off her, to fight again.  
She sprang up to fight beside him, shocked into action from hearing his voice.  
_He had saved her life.  
_But Ashley would never thank him.  
Another barb plunged into his leg, blood spurting from the initial impact. He hacked it away after a moment, finding his knife, but the damage was done.  
Ashley couldn't help him. She focused iron will upon making those flash grenades find the right places. _Pull, aim, throw, Pull, aim, throw, Pull, aim, throw. _

_  
_Ashley ducked again, and turned to Degen, on the ground beside her.  
He smiled thinly at her through the helmet, his torch making his face look pale...too pale.  
Ashley almost got lost in his look. His brave smile, in the face of...  
Ashley stood up again, having heard the flash grenades detonate.  
The Lickers were in chaos. The flash grenades had provoked them not into attacking the BSAA.., but eachother. Groups of Lickers tore into each other, ripping up strands of muscle, feasting on stomachs.

More still remained, advancing towards her position, at least a dozen. A few were dragged into the Lickers own frenzied mele, struck at with giant yet scalpel like claws or dragged into the carnage, hooked with those needle like tongues. And suddenly, flash grenades rained upon the Lickers.  
Not every soldier had them. But captains, some of the better of the squads had them.  
'DUCK AND COVER!' Ian and numerous captains screamed over the chaos.  
Ashley fell to her belly, covering her eyes and ears. Covering Degens head protectively as the flurry of flash grenades detonated in a cacophony of noise and light.

Fires burned. Ignited by oxidised magnesium saturating and setting alight the soft hairs of the carpet. Burning and shriveling the muscle of any Licker which was caught in the flames. The most of which, before thirsting for the hearts of the BSAA soldiers, were now in complete disarray.  
Somehow, Ashley realised, her plan had worked.  
Flash grenades wouldn't blind or incapacitate the Lickers – they relied on their scent and smell to find their prey. But the flash grenades also unleashed a deafening whine when they detonated, something that had angered them. Caused them to lash out at any others near by, human or not.

But even now, as Ashley and some other BSAA slaughtered another disorientated Licker with gunfire, she could barely believe it had worked. In most other circumstances, it wouldn't have.  
As it was, it had worked spectacularly. But the battle still raged, and screams and gunfire and blood still filled the air. Ashley whipped her gun to bear upon another of the monsters, but it had already plunged its claws through human torso, a soldier who had ventured recklessly forward. Their intestines slid off its razor sharp fingers, and Ashley found herself running toward it amid the chaos as it heard her footsteps, disregarding the after-whining of the flash grenades and the angry hissing of its brethren to turn to her.

She shouldn't have done it. But her adrenalin was pumping. Bullets were flying around her as more BSAA advanced, yet she knew other commanders would now be seeing her, and they would be screaming for her to back away from the Licker.  
Its tongue exploded from its maw.  
Ashleys knife flicked almost of its own will to meet the barb, deflecting it wide of her. Ashley barely thought about it at the time. She had already leapt, its claws rising too slow to stop her landing on its back.  
Leaning down she tore the knife through its muscle, and then its throat. It collapsed under her weight.

'ASHLEY!'

She had an instant to look up at Jermaine screaming her name before she was bowled over, a Licker crushing her under its weight, her arms pinned by her sides.  
She looked up her death and its eyeless face. Its fangs dripped saliva into her face as nimbly it pinned her down with its feet, claws closing around her throat, the other claw rising high-  
Jermaine, his knife unsheathed, attacked with frenzied fury. His knife sliced through the muscle of the arm which was about to strike down and kill her, the claws spasming as he put his boot into its side.  
The Licker fell upon its back, and Ashley did not hesitate. In one instant she saw the rippling organ that was its heart, buried beneath thin skin. In another instant her knife tore through it. The Lickers desperate strains for life were ended as Ashley and Jermaine dropped to one knee and fired as one.

_All captai---come i--  
_Ashley recognised the voice of Hunnigan, even through the disturbed signal. Something was scrambling their communications.  
'COME IN HUNNIGAN!' Ashley screamed, taking the call as she looked around at the Lickers

surrounding her, their jaws wide, their bellies scraping the carpet...

They were all dead. Their mouths lay open. Bullets scarred their brains, their arms. Other Lickers lay in the death grips of eachother, dead from the blood loss while still trying to rend muscle and tear veins.  
And Ashley noticed suddenly that, barring the odd killing shot, the guns had ceased. BSAA moved amongst the dead – orders rang out as the BSAA moved to dispatch of any remaining.

'ASHLEY!' The voice of Ian rang out across the floor, and she turned to him knowing the reprimand that was coming, even as Hunnigans voice again fought with static across her comms.  
'WHAT THE FUCK WAS TH-'  
Inexplicably, Ashley raised a finger to him, silencing him on the spot. Something else Ashley would later wonder upon, but for now she tried to maintain a comms with Hunnigan.  
'Hunnigan!' She shouted. 'Talk to me!'  
_---Bomb!---bomb---base---  
_'The comms aren't working...' Ashley muttered, turning the other way, turning this way and that amid the bustle until she saw something that made her freeze.

The glow of the bomb filled her vision. The face of Albert Wesker loomed, lighting the small tube that was the radiation bomb next to it. The radiation bomb that would syncronise its detonation with the target bomb's explosion, subduing and destroying the progenitor virus.  
'This isn't the bomb.' Ashley said.  
'Then where is it?' Ian asked, accepting Ashleys conclusion without a second thought and saving any confrontation for later.  
Ashley only had to think for a moment before blurting out 'The basement. The basement is where they kept the Lickers, until a signal was activated to release them through bomb detonation, so they could move up to..._contain _us while the bomb detonated.'  
'Why in the basement?' Ian asked, but before Ashley could answer, her feet had already carried her away.

'BUG 3! MOVE OUT!' Ian screamed from behind her, and as she ran past her unit to the stairwell, ignoring the stares from her unit, she glanced at Degen.  
He was being attended to by Biggins. Biggins hands were shivering as he extracted the barbs slowly and gently, Degen gasping as another soldier named Leo helped apply bandages.  
Ashley thought about them all for a moment. Felt for Biggins, who wasn't the proper paramedic. Felt dearly for Killy, who had been the paramedic. Felt for Degen, who had saved his life. Felt for Jermaine the rest, who shouldn't even have been there. Here because someone somewhere, wanted to feel important...  
Then she was into the darkness of the stairwell, and those thoughts fell silent.  
To the basement she had to go. Whatever monsters lay within.

The ground floor of the office building had been torn to smithereens. Concrete rubble, wood and wire laced the ground, Ashley stumbling over the hiding obstacles clumsily. Unwilling to face the twenty foot drop, and unable to she suspected without breaking something...or worse.  
'Hunnigan, where is the basement trap door?' Ashley muttered quickly upon establishing the comm link, but there was answer and no sign the Hunnigan had even heard her.  
'What is going-'  
'The basement entrance is in the delivery bay.' Ian said, having caught her up. 'And you are not going.'  
'Why not?' Ashley retorted furiously, the thought of not helping a sullen, empty thought. 'You need all the help you can get-'  
'Actually we don't.' Ian interrupted. 'We must enter the basement quietly and silently, and if we cannot do that we will deactivate the bomb whilst we die so Ashley Graham you are most certainly not going into that basement.'  
'And if I try?' Ashley demanded.  
'I will render you unconscious.' Ian said simply, smiling calmly.  
Ashley glared at him as he bade bug three move out. They filed past her, then she saw Jermaine, who patted her on the shoulder as he walked past.  
'You've done enough Ash.' He said. 'Get out while you can.'  
He didn't look back as he walked past, Ashley staring after him with a mixture of fear and frustration, wanting to run up to Jermaine and beg him to run, to run if things went wrong. All of her senses told her to get him away, told her to _go home. _  
_But that wasn't professional._

She waited a few seconds as the squad hurried away, and their echoes died away. For a few moments, she stood alone in the reception, gun hanging loosely by her side.  
She thought about her family, mom and dad. She thought about Eddie, a Bernese Mountain dog which had passed away a few months before Spain. Her closest companion for years and years. She had been lonely after that. That was why she had gone on holiday alone in the first place. She couldn't remember why these days.  
Then she thought about Jermaine. Her best friend, who could be taken away in the coming minutes. Her best friend, who had saved her life. In so many ways.  
It wouldn't be professional to go with them, explicitly against a superiors orders. It would be unprofessional to risk herself here.

Unprofessional was an interesting word. It was a bit like when a child disobeyed her parents. When a child got a tattoo. When a child got a weird boyfriend who smoked weed. When a child disobeys her parents to join the BSAA.  
She was swaying back and forth, unable to decide whether to go or to say. Thoughts of her parents, stricken with agonising grief at her funeral, mingled with thoughts of her room, Leons last words to her..._stay at home, have a kids life..._mingled with the thought of Jermaines grave, and herself, and the desolation, and Eddie...  
_Damn it all, _Ashley thought, gritting her teeth at her own indescision. _Damn it all._

As it turned out, the basement entrance was in fact a storage lift. The remaining survivors of bug 3 with Ian at its head. They had been lucky – only four of their squad had died and only three were casualties. This Jermaine was clinging to – at least he wasn't dead. At least Ashley wasn't dead.  
_Yet._

The lift was loud. Far too loud as it moved downward into the gloom. It almost seemed to make Ian's whispering into the comm pointless.  
'Move quickly. We cannot remain by the lift. Deal with any Lickers using knives, but do not engage from the front if at all possible. If we do this right, we will have all the time in the world to defuse the bomb and leave. If not... we will disarm the bomb.'  
Jermaine thought it was quite unnecessary for Ian to say that.

The lift dropped so, so slowly. Jermaine could almost hear the _clickclickclickclick _of the Lickers, climbing the walls toward the cumbersome lift. His heart rate rising, and yet his muscles felt like they were shriveling, freezing, making him weak.  
Suddenly, the warrior spirit he had felt in the third floor, with hundreds of Lickers closing around them, had fled.  
There was something else.  
Suddenly, the lift touched the floor with a sharp thump. Around him, his teammates walked briskly off the elevator, breaking into a spear tip formation to advance into the dark.  
Jermaine shook himself off and followed them.

The basement of this office block was piled with stack upon stack of wrapped paper, forming walls and alleyways into the dark like a labyrinth. Boxes waited for the paper to be packed into, foam dots lit up like stars as the torchlight hit them, scattered across the concrete ground. Near by a forklift truck stood by.  
Jermaine couldn't tell how far the basement stretched. But his hearing told him enough.  
There were no Lickers down here.  
_But then, _wondered Jermaine as he followed on the right of the spear tip, his unit advancing into the gloom of the paper labyrinth, _what was?_  
Almost a minute of gentle advancing passed. Jermaine was beginning to wonder when the basement would end, before the spread of torchlight found their target.  
Ian's torchlight had found a crater in the concrete. Blasted upwards, a hole ripped in a pipe below, exposing water washing past below.  
'Sewage pipe?' Duncan asked.  
'No.' Ian said. 'A water pipeline.'  
'Then whats that?'  
Jermaines sudden blurt surprised even himself, but his torch had pointed unerringly at something else, hanging above the exposed pipe. It was cylindrical, smooth and metallic, and the torch lit a box on the side, the screen red like blood. A similar coloured line stretched from the bottom tip., right down to the hole in the piping, cables wired into the foundation, a cable pinned into the ceiling held the bomb firmly suspended in the air.  
Wires ran from the top of the tube. They ran elsewhere, beyond the torch light.

'GET TO IT SOLDIERS!' Ian screamed, evidently switched on by the prescense of the device above. 'WE DO NOT STOP AND STARE! WE DO!WE TAKE ACTION NOW GET TO IT! JERMAINE, DIFFUSE IT! UNIT! PROVIDE COVER!'  
The soldiers were already moving. Jermaine nodded quickly to Mike before he moved away like a ghost to form a perimeter. Hoping desperately that Mike would live to see him again. And likewise.  
Something was wrong here, Jermaine knew, reaching up to grasp thin rods on each side of the bomb, seeing the numbers _3:45_ flash across the screen, below that a numbered panel, the digits glowing in the gloom. His feet scraped the edge of the bomb crater, his toes balancing precariously as he stood on them to reach the bomb.

Jermaine was sure that the seconds were moving too quickly as he drew from his gear a screw driver, using it to break the front of the panel off.  
He recognised the bomb, or at least some of it. He recognised the top anyway. It was a small device, and couldn't destroy a floor, let alone this building. It was a tiny explosive device, compared to some false ones Jermaine had trained on.  
But bigger bombs were easier to disarm then this one.

Jermaine looked up to see the cable by which it was suspended, knowing that the bomb was highly adaptable to the point that the person who put this bomb here would also have wires running through the cable, so that they wouldn't be able to cut the bomb free – it would detonate.  
If the thin lazor line down into the pipe was disturbed, it would detonate. So if the bomb was moved at all, it would detonate. Even if somehow they could cut the cable.  
The tip at the base of the bomb was an extension to the bomb. It would send nails in every direction, or it would have an extra charge of vicious explosive whithin.  
Or, more likely, it contained a virus, which would decimate Salt Lake City.

It was a cunning device. But Jermaine knew how to beat it.  
Hell, he was the best at bomb defusal in this force, except perhaps some of the commanders.  
Behind the cracked off panel and below the numbers on the screen still dripping away was the wiring. Red wires ,which Jermaine instantly focused his attention to would detonate the bomb in case of a wrong code typed in. Jermaine slid a tiny scalpel out of his kit, knowing without looking exactly where in his kit it was, then slicing each and every one of the red wires in half.  
'No comms down here boys!' Came Ians voice. 'If we get in trouble, we get ourselves out of it!'  
Jermaine wondered how they had lost contact with Hunnigan. Surely, he thought, there was something disrupting communications down here, so that they couldn't communicate effectively. But that in turn, didn't make sense if there was nothing down here to co-ordinate against.  
Something was wrong here...

Then once again he heard a familiar voice. Albert Weskers voice cut through the quiet air, sending goosebumps down Jermaines arms with the voice as well as the cold words.  
'Counter measures, activated.'

Jermaine felt his heart thump all the faster. He felt again for his screwdriver as somewhere in the dark above, something burst. Unseen things dropped from above with a soft thump, something like jelly splashing around it.  
Jermaine grabbed his gun in one hand and pointed it up at the cable. The torch on it revealed the wires, at least a half dozen, leading into the dark above.  
Whatever was in the darkness, he had just awoken it.

'WE HAVE COMPANY!' Jermaine bellowed, almost slipping into the sewer pipe as he let go of the bomb and looked around the darkness, his torch flashing across something far too close.  
Jermaine fell backward screaming as a talon tore its way toward his head. Piercing the air only, as Jermaine scrabbled backward, prone on the ground. His torch shone toward its legs, but as Jermaine scrabbled away, the monster fell onto four hairy, insectoid limbs, scuttling toward him...closing the distance far too quickly.  
What was this thing?

As if to help him, the basement lights flickered on.  
And he still couldn't identify it. Endless classes, notes taken, on every enemy the BSAA had faced, had absolutely nonplussed him. Had he missed a class? No...so what was this?  
Jermaine had to calm himself as he dodged another swipe of the talon. The thing had six limbs, two legs, what looked like twin pincers, and those two talons with which he was currently being assailed. Jermaine fired a burst of machine gun shots, but they simply deflected off its carapace, slick with presumably the egg it had just dropped from, and Jermaine was lucky not to have one o his own bullets come back at him.  
Somehow, he got up to his feet before it came again and retreated, hearing the screams, machine guns and death echo around the basement.  
He fired again, aiming for its head, its bulbous beady eyes which towered above his head as it advanced on two hind legs. Most of the bullets deflected away again with a twang, while one buried itself in the monsters eye. For all the creature reacted, Jermaine may as well have thrown a sponge at it.

Then Ian's voice rang out, above the renewed chaos.  
'SHOOT THE SACS! SHOOT THE SACS OR I WILL SHOOT YOU MYSELF!'  
_Sacs_? _What sacs??_  
But as Jermaine retreated, he found his answer. As he aimed again, looking all over its armour for this supposed weak point, he saw it. Out of its chest, as if that was how it breath, swelled a cream sac. It reminded Jermaine for a split second of a giant maggot, sprouting out of his chest, before he took aim at it.  
But his instant of distraction cost him. As if knowing his intentions the sac burst, spraying something thick and pungent into the air. Jermaine almost reeled from the acidic scent, stumbling backward as the creature advanced through its own smoke screen, and the sac was already gone again, shrinking behind armour plates which slid across to cover where the sac had disappeared to in the things stomach.

It scuttled suddenly quicker forward. As Jermaine tried to escape out of its range it struck.  
A moment later, Jermaines gun was trapped in the creatures pincers. His head was there a moment earlier. His head probably would have cracked half as easily as his rifle which bent under the strain, as the talons slashed at him again, scratching at the front of his body armour and slicing the fabric to ribbons.  
Jermaine steeled himself. As it came again, the sac burst from its stomach. Maybe that was how it breathed. It didn't matter.

With his pistol he fired, once, twice, three times. There was almost an echo, as if his pistol shots were reverberating around him, echoing through his ears.  
The creature let out an ear splitting scream as it collapsed to one side, its talons flailing helplessly, oily water spewing out of the sac its cry becoming ragged, one of its legs buckling.  
Moments later, it was dead.  
Another sac on its back was similarly leaking. Jermaine looked up into familiar brown eyes, the one who had shot the creature from behind.  
Ashley still pointed her gun at the things dead corpse, watching for spasms, or breathing to suggest the hulking monster was still alive. Her pony tail fell over one shoulder, her helmet cast away. For an instant of a moment, one of her light brown eyes flickered to meet his. For just a moment, he was hypnotised.

'You okay?' She asked, sounding hoarse. '...What is this thing?'  
Jermaine regained his senses.  
'Go back to ground level.' He demanded, walking over to her and taking her arm. 'You should _not be here.' _  
'And you are going to send me back up?' Ashley said, a threatening tone in her voice as she turned to look at him. 'You have a bomb to defuse-'  
'And now a friend to look after!' Jermaine hissed. 'A friend and an extremely important VIP, now go!'  
'No.' Ashley said. 'You should be thanking me! I found the lights, I killed that...thing.'  
'I-' Jermaine suddenly realised he was being distracted. He gave her a last look that he hoped said _go back _before walking a back toward the bomb.

It infuriated him to know that Ashleys steps stopped right behind him when he was at the crater, reaching up to grasp the bomb. But there was little he could do about it. He had to use her. The lights above flickered – some of them didn't come on at all, and he suspected this was all a cover up, or at least hadn't been used in a very long time. But that was moot. Shadows mingled with the light, and Jermaine couldnt keep an eye.  
'GET BACK TO THE BOMB!' Jermaine bellowed, before whispering to Ashley as he noticed all too clearly the numbers _2:05 _on the panel. 'Ashley, keep two eyes open.'  
She swiveled her rifle back and fourth, hearing the other echoes, not knowing if they were quiet BSAA steps or the clicking of insectoid feet.

'Captain Graham...'  
Jermaine couldnt see the look on Ian's face as he walked back over. He knew Ashley was in trouble. But _he _had bigger problems.  
He had forced off the second layer – without the red wires the bomb would not detonate. But now he was faced with something complicated indeed. On this final layer a forest of wires greeted him. _  
_Now he hesitated. He called these Jenga wires. Because if he cut the wrong wires...clatter. Or in this case..._boom._180,000 people facing quarantine and annihilation if he made one-

Jermaine tried to relax.  
It was just a jenga tower. One of the type he had played every week for years.  
He clipped his first wire, and his second in quick succession. No panicking, no rushing. Just efficient, relaxed bomb defusal. He couldn't hear Ian's quiet but furious argument with Ashley. He didn't think about Mike, who could be dead somewhere in these alleys of paper._ Defuse the bomb and he might still be alive...try and find him and let the bomb go off, and hes dead for certain.  
_Time was ticking away. The clicking grew louder. They were not footsteps.  
All the noise grew loud – the gunfire, Ian shouting, Ashley grunting. Even the spray of what Jermaine assumed were the monsters sacs was loud in his ears, his thoughts hard to hear over the cacophony...

The timer now read _0:40. _His time had slipped away so quickly, and now he was struggling to grasp which wire to cut next. _Black. No, red. No, red is already cut.  
_Then from behind him he heard Ashley cry out in pain.  
He expected himself to leave the bomb for dead and rush to her side, blinded with rage.  
Instead, his thoughts solidified.  
_0:25  
Dark blue, light blue, white, orange-  
0:20 _There was a struggle behind him, mere feet – more clicking was growing louder – they closed on him - _Brown, yellow, pink, purple- done – _Weskers voice rang through the air as Jermaine turned into the fight, screaming with battle lust and desperation to save his friends.  
_Device...deactivated.  
_The laughter of a dead man filled the air. It continued seemingly forever, at least until finally the office block on route 48 fell quiet and the flow of blood finally stopped.

_  
_


	5. Chapter 5

Authors note: Okay. Here we have another chapter with a bit of action but not a great deal to be honest. Its another chapter of bridging – next chapter goes into South America, a place were going to be seeing a lot more of in coming chapters with the help of research and such. But for now we continue on Ash and Jermaine, and it only just occurred that I haven't really described Jermaines look. What did you guys picture him as?  
Another character introduced in this section – I am hoping to bring a variety of characters into the fold for this particular piece, especially considering the potentially apocalypto story line to come involving Hickers and a variety of other peoples. Im also hoping to have a whole different type of outbreak, but I havent actually thought of this precisely yet. But it will come with time. In the mean time I am going to continue to check out this site .com/wiki/Resident_Evil_Wiki for my research into old resident evil subjects, hopefully bringing a few in although I'll be the first o admit my resi knowledge has holes in it.**  
**So there we go. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and keep an eye out for the next at some point soon – Im off to uni but I will try my best to keep this going and that is a promise.

**  
Chapter 5: Six Months**

She struggled against the iron that pinned her wrists to the leather of the chair arms, feeling the mist coil around her, chilling her bare arms and her bare legs.  
Even her neck, as she looked around only to see this chair and the fog around her, felt heavy, as if it's cogs were rusted. If there was anything visible through the light grey curtain that smothered her, her blurred eyes couldn't see it.  
She tried to cry out, into the dark. No words came from her lips. Somewhere in the distance, maybe he heard herself crying out, but as swiftly as she thought she had heard it, the cry was gone. She tired to look around behind her- she could just about crane her aching neck enough to see pipes running down a steel wall, her leather chair screwed to that steel wall.  
As she tried to remember where she was, how she had gotten there, she coughed. Tasted a metallic tinge in her mouth. Saw splittling blood land on the front of her jumper.  
_Plagas._

She froze with fear, feeling that her breathing was suddenly more ragged, her heart rate more desperate, and no matter how hard she tried to draw breath, it seemed her energy was being drawn away, and she knew it was being taken by the plagas, the parasite pushing her organs forward as it grew, and suddenly, she could barely breath at all.  
She tried to cry out again.  
_Leon...Leon...  
_The mist cleared before her. She was behind a glass panel. Outside the glass, a shaded lab, gantries and monitors shone out in the dark, vast tubes snaking away from her pod.  
Neon light from the monitor revealed Leon, spread-eagled on the ground. His eyes wide open, staring into space.

She screamed his name as she laid eyes on him, his limbs buckled and snapped, blood pouring out of his nose and his shredded eyeballs. His forearms were snapped in two, as were his legs. His pistol cast useless to on side.  
'Leon..._Leon_...' She cried, tears trickling down her face, her breath trickling away, her voice lost.  
Then his fingers curled.

She watched stunned as he sat up, his pupils blood red, and glared straight at her. His mouth hang slack, his neck broken to one side but it couldn't be, it couldn't be...

But he began to laugh, his croaking but sneering jeers constricting her throat, Leon crawling toward the tank, grinning lopsided at her as she tried to free her hands – if she could remove her hands, she could smash the glass, and run, and -

But even as she strained impossibly against the binding iron, she saw someone else emerge from the darkness. Someone that made her bood still, made her hope that somehow the glass could not be broken or opened, yet she knew he could, he with his thin cut hair, his thick, purple robes, his staff which flickered with an plagas parasite.  
His wide smile, his sunken, dead eyes.  
'No..._No...' _Ashley moaned.  
'Goodbye Ashley Graham.' Osmund Saddler said. 'I am going to enjoy your death...'

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Ashley opened her eyes.  
She breathed heavily, staring up at her ceiling, the ceiling of her bedroom, in her parents house. Checking her wrists, to check they were not bound. Looking around, to see her room exactly as it was. Relief flowing through her joints as she realised she was safe. Feeling her lungs expand freely, for the lack of parasites infecting her.  
Saddler was dead, and she knew it.

She slipped out of her bed, the chill greeting her exposed skin, the scar on her higher right hip, and stood in front of the mirror. Her hair was in a mess. Trailing uncontrolled behind her ears and down beyond her neck. She took hairbands from the draw next to her bed, typing her mess back into a pony tail again, and looked at her clock.

It said 02:00, April 12th. She normally would have gone straight back to bed.  
But April 12th was nearly six months since Salt Lake city, and she had too much to think about.  
She paced for a while, unable to decide whether to get dressed or to go back to bed, watch a movie on her laptop...It was one of the few things she hadn't packed away in boxes.  
Eventually, she sat down on the bed. Her i-phone was on her side desk.

_'Hi.'  
_'Hey' replied Ashley, upon hearing Jermaines voice. 'I'm surprised you're still awake...'  
'_You get all the time in the world if you stay up late Ash'  
_Ashley smiled. The nightmare was almost forgotten in pleasant talk. Almost.  
_'...did you call up for anything in particular?'  
_'I'm in the mood for camping.' Ashley muttered, looking toward the door, suddenly paranoid that her father could be listening through it. 'We could gather wood, make a fire-'  
_'What happened?'_  
Ashleys smile faded. She hesitated, and she knew Jermaine knew.  
_'We could talk now.' _He suggested.  
'You know I hate long talks over the phone.'  
'_Its late Ash...'  
_'Exactly the point of camping.'  
_'Oh comeon...'  
_'Jay...' Ashley found herself saying. 'I...would appreciate it.'  
She didnt hear anything from him for a moment. She thought she might have heard the heavy breath of a sigh, but a moment later he spoke again.  
_'Okay. Usual place?'  
_'Yeah.'  
'_...I'll see you then, then_.'  
'Okay...'  
'_See you.'  
_Disconnected.

-------------------------------------------------------------

_Six months before, give or take an hour, she had been fighting for her life.  
Vainly she batted away the pincers that seeked to crush her head, her knife like a plastic spoon compared to the things talons and pincers. Deftly, she rolled to one side, hacking off one of its talons. But as quickly as she could think _three to go, _a smaller talon would burst from one of those cloudy sacs, as if stupidly it kept weapons in reserve, and before she cold climb on its back it twisted, its torso bending like no humans ever could, swiping at her with the talons again, leering with those bulbous eyes and two bone like fangs that unnerved her as much as she had even been since Spain._

Even as she watched it, wondering what exactly it was it attacked again, poking talons through the air toward her torso as the pincers scythed over her head. Ashley rolled under its claws, seeing out of the corner of her eye Jermaine trying desperately to concentrate, clippers hesitant in his hands as the clock counted down. Get on with it, _Ashley thought at him furiously, hoping that somehow he would get the message.  
She screamed out in pain. The smaller talon was protruding neatly through her hip, having struck her as she hesitated. It had her in its grasp as again it twisted on the spot, its legs still facing almost the opposite direction.  
Gasping in pain, she hacked the talon off and fell away, avoiding its pincers in doing so. But the pain persisted. It was as if she had been stung by a massive hornet, and the pain was spreading down her leg, numbing it._

Using one foot, she tried to crawl away from the thing, its talons now rattling on the concrete as it used them to propel itself forward. With one hand and one foot she crawled away, as in the corner of her eye she saw Ian in the grip of one of them, a talon tearing into his side...  
Moaning in pain, she took her pistol in her other hand and fired desperately at its torso.  
Bullet one – deflected away. She was sure she felt the breeze of it come back past her face. It was a matter of feet away, bending down towards her, those eyes pitiless, hungry-  
She fired again. The bullet deflected away, bouncing off the metal shelves to her left with a loud twang, but the creature was above her head, talons to either side of her, and close pincers were closing on her-  
She fired again.  
Her bullet burst the sac, that had just erupted from its belly.

It screeched and collapsed upon her, snapping the talon in her hip with the weight, the shattered remains shredding more skin like rusty metal. Ashley screeched and sobbed with pain as she tried to move it – it was still alive, its talons and pincers were flopping drunkenly, Ashley trying desperately to climb onto its back where the other two sacs were bulging, its vitals exposed. She was sure she could hear something, someone laughing at her as she pushed down on its bulbous eyes which were tough like marble, and the laughter continued even as she levelled her gun at one of the sacs-  
Then it recovered.

The thing flipped Ashley effortlessly over its back as it reared up, and she found her hand catching something, something soft, something which tore like paper, and awashed her hand with something stinking like noxious gas.  
The wind was knocked out of her, as behind her the creature screeched again, for the last time.  
Ashley struggled to get up as behind her, the creature collapsed, its life blood leaking away.  
So too was Ashleys.

_'ASH! ASH! NO, ASHLEY GRAHAM! GET, UP!'  
She smiled as she recognised Jermaine's voice, the last thing she would hear, before feeling his arms around her back as she slipped away into the dark.  
The mysterious creatures lay dead around her, along with ten other soldiers, scattered in their own blood around the basement._

A day later, the creature would go under autopsy. Another day later, Redfield would tell of his experience with the same creature in the depths of the TRICELL (Once an UMBRELLA) facility.  
Another day later, and the creature was well known among the BSAA higher echelons.  
It was known as the Reaper. 

__

Jermaine did hate wandering through the woods in the dark of night.  
The moon was obscured by the clouds above, so he was forced to use the light of his phone to walk onward. The leaves which smothered the ground crackled under his feet, paling in the phone light, Jermaine sweeping it back and fourth, looking for the amber glow of fire, fur boots. Or a pair of watching eyes. Or maybe he would hear their crackling footsteps.

Since the BSAA camp, there was little he was scared of more then the woods after sunset. He remembered that day, when they had heard the footsteps. Jermaine eventually found out it had been Ian, watching them as they fought with sticks.  
But what if it had been someone else?  
Then a few weeks later he had been in the last test, where they used their skills against a variety of opponents, mostly BOW's. Maybe the dark should have helped him. But Jermaine found out afterwards that the fear had stymied his movement, making him an easy target.  
Nowadays, he tried to make his movement quicker and yet efficient. Yet that fear still ate at the back of his mind. Anyone could have been watching him and Ashley that day in the woods.  
_And anyone could be watching him now.  
_Therefore, as he would though the woods he knew the dark would make him shiver regardless of how used to it he tried to grow.  
Then suddenly he stumbled upon the fire. Or at least, what there was of it so far.  
Ashley had gathered sticks, a lot of them in fact. But just looking at her striking together two stones in a vain attempt to light the stick told Jermaine that she didn't have a half clue.  
'Comeon!' She hissed, frustrated, her back to him as she tried to strike the stones, to no obvious effect.  
Jermaine put her hands around his neck as he spoke.

'It cannot, cannot be Nine – Seven to me.' He said, part joking, part gloating.  
'Well possibly not if I smash your head in with these rocks...' Ashley offered, holding them up so he could see.  
'No... I win again. That's four times in a row now.'

Ashley sighed as he sat down next to her, shining his phone light in her face.  
'You have bags under your eyes.' Jermaine said.  
'So do you.'  
'Well I stay up at night.' Jermaine finished, looking at her with worry.  
Ashley looked back at him with a rueful grin.  
'Too many late night movies.' She said.  
Jermaine smiled sadly back. Knowing exactly what she meant.

'Now...' He began again. 'Would you like to know the secret...of firestarting?'  
'Har har...'  
Jermaine got out a small tube from his pocket, poked the tip into the fire, and pressed a button on its top. A small flame was born from its tip.

'Oh _har har...'_  
'What?' Jermaine said, dropping the lighter back in his pocket. 'Better then stones...'

-------------------------------------------------------------

_Five months ago, Ashley, Jermaine were called into BSAA HQ for debriefing.  
The BSAA had been considered very much under scrutiny in the wake of the Salt Lake City incident. Criticism was rolling in from those parties that knew, criticism of the lives lost and the way the operation was carried out. The lives lost, all twenty three of them, were being used against the organisation itself._

Chris Redfield was back behind his desk, after a long time away. Hunnigan sat by his side, clicking away at a computer mouse. Avoiding their eyes.  
_  
Ashley was still on crutches. Her muscles had been cut up badly, bone fractured. But this was not a meeting she wanted to miss, and she had been more relieved that Jermaine standing next to her was unharmed. She had practically dragged her into joining, and that particular thought was still a concern, a guilty twinge in her thoughts._

But his relaxed smile suggested he had forgotten it, for now. Ashley and Jermaine had been withdrawn from training, told to rest up. So too had Ian, although there was a very good reason for his vacation.  


_now sat in a wheel chair. His legs and his lower torso had been almost shredded off, yet somehow surgeons had saved his life. If not his legs.  
He avoided their eyes, staring straight ahead at Commander Redfield as he considered his thoughts and his words, and Ashley wondered if he really wanted to be sitting here. Working at a desk, signing papers and writing reports was certainly not something Ashley would describe as one of Chris' more suited traits – if Ian was muscly, Chris was a hulk of a man, and his iron-like forearms resting on a desk while he massaged his scalp was almost surreal._

'Thanks for coming...' Chris began, folding his arms on top of the papers scattered across the desk.  
'You are here because the BSAA has landed itself in some fire...' Chris began. 'We may consider Salt Lake city essentially a success, but others around the American government question the lives lost...and claim that the operation was flawed.'  
Ashley didn't speak. She had known that, in certain areas they were found wanting. But she saw Ian, sitting in that chair, looking as morose as anybody in the room, she simply didn't have the heart.  
'The army among others would like to be more involved in the operation of the BSAA.' Chris continued. 'Even more now they know you were involved...'  
Ashley almost took a step back as Chris' eyes fell on her. Disappointment swam in those pools of blue before he looked back to his paperwork and sighed.  
'Lets keep it blunt, hey? Your active involvements with BSAA have all been terminated.'

Three jaws dropped as Chris delivered those words.  
But even as Ashley, Jermaine and Ian opened their mouths to protest Chris cut them off.  
'It is already done. Don't argue.' He said. 'Go back to your normal lives and pretend that you never worked for us. End of story.'  
'And what about me...' Ian muttered. 'I have nothing _left but my duty and you're going to cut me off?'  
__'You are no longer fit to fight.' Chris retorted, although he said it sorrowfully. 'And that's all there is to it.'  
At that Ian fell silent. He gripped the edges of his wheel chair, his he held pridefully high as he turned his wheelchair and rolled out of Chris' office.  
One last time, Ian caught Ashley's eye as he left. He looked as if he was dying inside. As if he had been struck drunk on Chris' cold dismissal. _

_  
Ashley only just heard what Chris said next.  
'Ashley...you may as well go too.'  
Ashley didn't hear the words for a moment as she turned back around. It was all very strange. It was almost as if there was an odd taste on her tongue. She had saved thousands of lives, and then... she had been fired.  
Nonetheless, Ashley nodded.  
'It has been an honour commander.' She said.  
Chris nodded, avoiding her eyes.  
Feeling suddenly unwelcome, Ashley limped out, her own crutches slowing her. The back of her neck burning.  
She limped out into the forest, smelling the air as she went. She would miss that smell of the wood. Every day when she left the barracks early morning for training, she would smell that cut fresh scent from the trees, pine and bark._

The barracks around were quiet. No soldiers jogged, no gunshots, no shouts.  
It sounded wrong, and definitely far too quiet as Ashley got into the waiting Humvee which would take her home. It seemed like a quiet end to an era, an end to her years of plagas, viruses, lickers.  
It wasn't the ending that she thought it was. Her dismissal from the BSAA was not how she would remember that day.  
She would remember that day, as the day that Leon Kennedy died.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The fire was quickly roaring, and Jermaine and Ashley both stared into its depths. For a while, they talked about nothing. Both of them were lost in thought, the fire glowing bright in their eyes.  
It had been a week or so since they had talked. That in itself was odd. Ashley had called Jermaine a few times, to find his phone busy. That too was odd. But Ashley didn't really care now that he was here. She watched the flames, leaning into Jermaine's side, her stress fading away.

Her thoughts floated to Leon again.  
It had in fact made the newspapers the next day. Although notable front pages screamed the headline _EX-PRESIDENTS DAUGHTER FOUGHT IN AFGHANISTAN, _if anyone had turned few pages into the newspaper that day they would have found an article about a house that had burned down in the outskirts of Washington. In actual fact, Jermaine told her, a week or so later the house had exploded. The house which just so happened to belong to a bodyguard of the president and keeper of the now tenuous connection between the president and the BSAA.  
The moment she had heard about that, from the Humvee driver taking her home, something snapped inside her.

She spent days in bed. Every so often, a tear would fall down her cheek. Every often over those days Jermaine would call, and she would reject. Eventually, she turned her phone off.  
She hadn't loved Leon...she didn't _think_ so...even as she had thought that she had questioned it. _He had saved her life..._Ashley had acted so crazily around his blonde hair and bright stare... _He had saved her life lots of times..._and only she and Hunnigan truly knew what he had gone through to do that._  
_But Leon had treated her like a child...  
No, she cried every so often and spent days sleeping after his death because...she truly didn't know what to do next. She would have liked to talk to him more – there were thing she regretted not asking. (what do I _really _do now? How did you feel for me? She often whispered to the bedroom ceiling, only to stuff her pillow into her face for continuing to think about him.)  
But most of all, she guessed that she had wanted to prove herself to him, once and for all.  
But now he was gone. And she could prove nothing.

Jermaine, was not thinking about Leon.  
As he stared into the fire, he felt every strand of Ashleys blond hair on his neck. Felt her leg touch his as she curled up close to him, her Jeans brushing his jogging trousers.  
That was why he was relaxed. That was why his own nightmares fell away, and he was happy thinking about just her.  
Ashley thought she knew. He could tell from the look she had given him when he had asked her out so long ago.  
She had laughed. Jermaine knew Ash damn well after years of talking to her almost every day, and he knew she wouldn't have done that if she knew...if she _truly knew.._.  
He wondered what would happen if he told her right there and then. Would she run? Would she kiss him?  
Jermaine decided against it. It wasn't needed. And considering his current commitments, inappropriate.

'Thanks...'  
'What for?' Jermaine asked, surprised at hearing her speak.

'For coming here. For helping light the fire...' Ashley said, her voice weak and on the edge of sleep. 'Can't even count... how many times I should've said thank you.'  
'Ash...' Jermaine said, seeing a chance. Dare he try...  
'Yeah?' She replied.  
'Ash...you... don't have to say thanks to me.'  
They were both quiet for a moment. Jermaine felt that feeling similar to the moment in the battle, where it was like a kettle boiling over with water where he had to turn it off, kill the threat before it boiled. Where you died.  
He felt the silence boiling over, the tension wrenching his heart out of his chest...  
Ashley twisted her neck. Jermaine felt her kiss him on his cheek.  
It felt like in the time she had kissed him, all his organs unknotted, and his heart turned into butterflies.  
He looked down at her, and she looked up at him.  
'Thankyou.' Ashley muttered.

Jermaine suddenly stood up, pitching Ashley into the ground. She was about to open her mouth and protest when she saw what Jermaine had drawn. A black pistol seemed all the more dark in the firelight, and so too suddenly did the shadows around the fire, closing in, along with hundreds of infected, and lickers and- Ashley snapped her mind back into shape and soundlessly leapt to two feet, scanning the darkness for whoever Jermaine had just detected.  
There was nothing. Then there was the quiet thump of quick footsteps. Running around them, yet Ashley couldn't tell in which direction, and her hands raised in defence for all the training they had taken felt particularly pointless.

It was.  
Jermaine's pistol was flying through the air before he could more it more then a few inches to bear on their new assailant, the cloaked warrior too fast for Jermaine, too strong...far too strong- but Ashley was already rolling, about to whip her leg out, kick the enemys legs out from under them, where they would then fall into the fire-  
But before she knew it, she was being pulled to her feet. The effect was disorientating, even as she recovered – she couldn't quite get around the fact that she thought she was staring at herself for a moment- a pale face greeted her from beneath the hood, the same lines under her eyes. Blonde hair tied back.

'Miss Graham.' The hostile greeted. 'Its an honor to find you hiding in a dark wood. And novice-' she looked over to Jermaine while still holding Ashleys arms within a firm grip.. '...you can do better.'  
She seemed to wear a half grin, as if she was making a joke but half being serious at the same time. Jermaine certainly wasn't laughing as he went to get his gun.  
'I could have shot you.'  
'Well that wouldn't have been clever either.' She replied. 'Aren't you going to introduce me?'  
'Ash...this is Jill. Jill, Ashley.' Jermaine introduced, looking like he had swallowed a lemon.  
'Jill...Valentine?' Ashley asked, Jill having let her go.  
'Only by night.' She replied, flashing for the briefest of instances a grin before it disappeared back into that pale, unreadable face. 'Are you ready? We have to go.'  
Jermaine and Ashley both looked at eachother, before looking back at Jill. 'Why?' Jermaine blurted, looking confused and at the same time extremely wary.  
As she said her next words, there was no joke on her face. No flash of a grin. Her features looked deathly cold, as if she had been locked in a freezer and left to die. Remembering the rumours that had circulated around Redfields last mission...maybe she had.  
'Code raccoon.' She said.  
Then one of those half grins again flicked her face.  
'I _bet_ you've been waiting for this day... haven't you?'


End file.
